At the moment I'm working in the bio/ag-tech industry and can see the same thing coming down the road in the wheat/corn/soybeans/milo industry, where big industry players have foolishly limited the gene pool in the name of profit.
Sorry if I seem rude here, but you must not have a very good understanding of your company, or it must be one of the few smaller companies who generally only maintain/propagate existing varieties, or you are being intentionally vague when you say 'bio/ag-tech industry' and don't work in any directly relevant field at all.
Either that or I better tell a bunch of my coworkers that I heard on the internets that their entire international department, dedicated to allelic diversity, does not exist. In that case a bunch of my former coworkers at a previous place of employment will be facing a serious existential crisis as well.
You're actually describing discrimination based on phenotype, which this law is not meant to address.
For every characteristic related to performance of the job at hand, employers will be most interested in the actual expression of your capabilities rather than your underlying genotype, and they can legitimately evaluate those characteristics. Even the well-established ADA cannot touch this (which is why we don't have blind pilots).
Genotype information would be mostly useful with respect to characteristics which have no measurable or readily observable impact on your work, because those are factors that you cannot screen for during an interview/evaluation process. E.g., predisposition for diabetes, mental illness, or other medical complications which may result in higher rates of paid medical leave, etc., at some point in the future.
To use one of your example scenarios, it would be like the NFL turning down (or shortening the contractual commitment to) a prospective quarterback in spite of his impressive college career because he was genetically predisposed to early development of rheumatoid arthritis, and unlikely to be able to perform past the age of 26.
I don't necessarily agree with the law, mind you (especially since I haven't actually read it).
The original parent of this thread was referring to his ad campaign 'daring' identity thieves to steal his identity. The question is whether this provides an affirmative legal defense to any identity thieves who take him up on the challenge and get caught, and, if so, for how long? Until he is no longer CEO of or associated with Lifelock? Until he dies?
I think that's a good way to define high end computers sold to average consumers. You intentionally want to exclude corporations if you are looking at the consumer purchases. The problem is that it excludes a significant number (I'd guess vast majority, but that's just a hunch) of consumer purchases as well. I personally don't know anyone who bought a computer at a retail outlet. Even the mac owners I know ordered online or over the phone.
As I recall, it was more like 120-140 degrees rather than pretending it was full 180. Then again, I'm not convinced the jDome is true 180 either - think about it, one point, relatively close, projecting on to a hemisphere, by definition, can't get to the outtermost edges.
The display is 180 degrees for the observer because the observer is not at the center of the sphere. The observer is between the sphere's center and the projection surface, the image can fill 180+ degrees of the observer's view without fully covering the entire near hemisphere.
So I really don't think my claims are so extravagant when they are based on information coming directly from scientific studies. Granted, I am NOT in the biotech industry and do not possess the requisite education to interpret the findings directly. However, to the best of my recollection, these articles were not published in a biased manner against Monsanto specifically. The presentation of the information was not like that, IMO.
The problem is that none of the studies you referred to demonstrate the conclusions implicit in your posts.
The monarch butterfly study (there were actually many), for example, is one of the talking points of anti-GMO groups, but does not apply to field conditions. The studies most likely behind the claims in your posts basically consisted of researchers finding out how much Bt11 corn pollen had to be on the milkweed leaves before butterflies and other lepidoptera feeding on the leaves were adversely affected. The studies (e.g., here or broad overview of the subject here, and a good abstract that directly addresses the initial misunderstanding of the topic here) generally all find negligible, and potential positive impact of Bt11 on monarchs. More comprehensive studies noted correctly that the alternative to Bt11 varieties is broad-spectrum insecticidal sprays that are guaranteed to impact any butterflies in the field. Also, the number of butterflies that actually use cultivated croplands as a habitat has never been determined conclusively, but is known to be relatively low, as clean cultural practices drastically reduce the density of milkweed in croplands vs uncultivated ground, and the much taller corn plants deter butterflies from landing on milkweed in the field.
Similarly with the BGH-1 and dairy cattle: Studies have shown that BGH-1 consumption can raise the incidence of cancer. Monsanto produces rBGH, which is injected into dairy cattle to increase milk yields. Hence, Monsanto increases cancer!... Except not. While I'd rather not get milk from cows injected with rBGH, it's not because of fear of cancer (rather, it's the higher incidence of mastitis = more possible puss in milk.. eww). The milk from cows injected with rBGH does not contain significantly elevated levels of BGH. The variability of BGH in a cow's milk is such that a given cow not on rBGH, on a given week (it varies even for individual cows) can have higher BGH output in its milk than the next cow over that is being dosed with rBGH. If you want to avoid exposure to BGH, you just have to stop drinking cow's milk. Period. Non-rBGH milk will not help you in any way, shape, or form in this regard.
Finally, I've said it a few places before, but the usual portrayal of Percy Schmeiser's case is another example of a massively disingenuous representation of events for several reasons:
The issue of GMOs is completely orthogonal. Schmeiser's field would have been just as forfeit if he had used non-GMO Dekalb (a Monsanto brand) lines instead.
Whether or not you agree with the ethicality of the PVPA (plant variety protection act of 1970), Schmeiser was in violation of the law, which *everyone* in the plant breeder industry was extremely well aware of (especially by almost 30 years later!). Ignorance of the law is not a legal defense, and, in this case, was not even a plausible explanation.
Anyone reading the case, or even an abstract thereof, will note that 'contamination' was absolutely not the cause of his troubles. He deliberately, systematically, and knowingly selected for Monsanto's varieties.
Monsanto's reaction was unnecessarily brutal, but he was absolutely not innocent. The best analogy I can think of is a display spilling in front of a shoplifter, who gets caught
Secondly, the key to RR crops is consumer (i.e. farmer) product lock-in. Spraying Roundup on early post-emergent seedlings means that you can ONLY grow RR crops. Even with careful application, the drift will cause significant damage to adjacent crops.
That's the whole point of RR crops. You don't spray roundup post-emerge on non-RR crops at all. Drift control is a matter of spraying when the conditions are calm, or using a drift retardant like Sta-Put. This is all Intro to Farming 01. I'd learned this by the time I was growing my own crops to pay for my field trips etc. when I was 9.
Wrong. Just flat out wrong. It's not as common as it was, but MANY farmers harvest seed crops as well as food crops, get them washed and treated, and grow them again.
Only for non-hybridized crops, or crops developed and maintained by some universities and family farms. It has been illegal to save licensed seed without a license to do so since 1970.
And 'not as common as it was' is grossly mischaracterizing the situation, which, for e.g., corn, has been closer to 99%/1% hybrid/non-hybrid since the 60's.
Um...what? I'd love to know what you mean by this.
Your parent is probably referring to the fact that, with respect to organic vs. GM, organic foods have had many instances of deadly contamination due to organic growing practices (mainly stuff like E. Coli from improperly composted organic waste/fertilizer), whereas there are 0 cases of serious (let alone deadly) reactions to GM foods as a result of their being GM.
I have a problem with anyone that believes that they can conduct genetic research in anything but sealed laboratory conditions. Furthermore, when experimenting with ways to ensure that "life" cannot propagate, how can it NOT be prudent to do so in controlled conditions? Especially with plants. From what I have read before they have used retro-viruses to introduce new genetic material, in completely open and uncontrolled conditions. We are talking about conditions in which genetic material can spread out in the open. Granted, I am not in the biotech industry, but this would seem to be an area for concern, and individuals much more educated and informed them myself have written about just this fact.
I have worked for both major competitors to 'Monsatan' (they are generally seen as eeeevil inside the industry as well, and I'd refuse to work for them), and can tell you that that is not true. New starts are screened in isolated, environmentally contained greenhouses (with an annual power bill in the $X0,000,000 range.. yikes!). On the other hand, many Universities also perform genetic transformation research, generally on much smaller budgets, so I can't speak for those.
Monsanto researched, and it is continuing to do so, ways to ensure that their "products" cannot survive in the wild. This is not a safety measure. This is a DIRECT method of protecting intellectual property rights. As I stated before, their pursuit of this "knowledge" has been reckless with no thoughts given to anything but the profit margins of their company. It is this that makes them "evil" and a threat to all life on Earth.
As much as I dislike Monsanto, I can't really fault them for the 'terminator' gene, which is what you're referring to. Initially, they were criticized by people who were afraid that their genetic constructs would propagate uncontrollably. Lo and behold the terminator gene, which makes it impossible for their modified varieties to propagate unintentionally... and they're criticized for that too.
The 'terminator' gene isn't a threat to 'all life on Earth'.. quite the opposite. All carriers die off within 1 generation, limiting the gene's spread.
Where are the hidden pitfalls in Monsanto's research? What might "pop up" in the future? Will it make a difference that their research is conducted with practically no safety and their products are so widely spread across the planet? (emphasis mine)
Ok, now you're just spreading FUD here.
You can say what you want to about the benefits of genetically modified food, but the regulatory agencies responsible for it are nothing more than a rubber stamp. How could even a year or two of testing provide any meaningful data? This applies not only to food, but to everything we put in our bodies including pharmaceuticals. Once again, it may sound like I am opposed, and one could claim that I am an ignorant Luddite, but all i want is for longer periods of time to verify research being conducted. That's it. I'm just conservative.
I can respect that last position, but you should try to be better informed, or at least acknowledge in which areas you have a lack of knowledge rather than making extravagant claims with no backing.
Cross-pollination is usually not a problem because, unless you are selectively breeding for the crossed plants, the percentage of cross-pollinated plants will comprise a vanishingly small percentage of your crop.
Schmeiser's crop went from 0% RR canola to over 95% RR canola in one year. That requires a focused and deliberate effort. That is the key to why he lost the court battle, as per the last sentence in the text you quoted.
He sprayed around his crop, noticed that some plants survived the drift (these were outcrosses with RR). Next, he sprayed more of his crop, this time deliberately, and then only saved seed from the spray-screened plants. Had he simply saved a random sample of seed from his field (the standard practice for open-pollinated seed saving), the RR canola levels in his next crop would have been insignificant, and the outcome of the case would have been quite different.
Percy Schmeiser's case is significant mainly because at the time, most farmers (including him, obviously) thought that they could easily get away with illegally saving seed. E.g., corn breeders had been doing illegal inbred recoveries of Pioneer Hi-Bred females for decades. Monsanto was just the first—and generally remains the only—seed company that is absolutely ruthless in enforcing the letter of the law even with respect to small-time breeders.
That case marked the beginning of the qualitative trait identification and, now, marker-based germplasm identification techniques that actually make it feasible for a company to identify farmers using its varieties with a level of confidence that they can easily take to court.
It was illegal to do what Schmeiser was doing since the PVPA was passed in 1970, but, until the late 90s, it was generally something you could easily get away with. It is important to note also that this is not something unique to GM crops. Monsanto can and will sue for unlicensed use of its non-GM varieties as well.
The problem is that the pool of available and willing professional expertise is not static. I've already witnessed this at my current workplace, where, after less than 1 year of abandoning a relatively complicated process for a far more simple but grossly less efficient one due to temporarily relaxed requirements, the very same people who used to run the former process are unable to revive it as requirements swing back towards tighter schedules and resources--in fact their efforts to do so have made things even worse.
It is always harder to start (or revive) a program than to keep one running, and even highly skilled people who are capable of the latter may not be able to do the former if it is interrupted or temporarily disbanded for a significant period of time.
If you interrupt an extremely technically demanding program for 5 years, it will either or both take a long time or a director and team of a totally different caliber to bootstrap it again.
The principles described in the above also apply doubly to political will. At this point, NASA's funding is largely due to the legendary inertia of the government. If it were scrapped, it would take someone with an overwhelming mandate and clear, focused vision to build the political consensus and drive it through congress again.
Note that 5 years means that he is scheduling the program's revival in the next presidential term. He does not feel that it should be his responsibility to put humpty dumpty back together again after pushing him off a the wall.
It is hyperbole to say that this would kill manned space exploration, but it may well kill manned space exploration in the US until the next cold war/space race, which we are likely to lose if we try to revive gutted institutions to compete with a program with strong, decades-long unbroken momentum.
Also, speaking to the larger issue of education, 'more funding' is absolutely not a silver bullet that will guarantee better quality, and the education section in his 'blueprint' booklet is totally opaque. It identifies many issues (the easiest part), states proposals to address the issues (also easy), and then does nothing to explain why or how those proposals will work (the only part that really matters).
In all honesty, I think Obama is probably the candidate I dislike the least at this point, but--and I don't hold the following against him directly, per se--it really bothers me that his supporters seem to be under the influence of a Jobs-esque reality distortion field. That people on/. of all places are willing to trivialize the scrapping of a major program of NASA because a politician cries 'think of the children'--without even attempting a strong explanation of why this is necessary--is just sad.
Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you, "Do you want to pick door #2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?
That shows that the mathematicians were correct, actually, as her statement of the problem is missing the critical component. Whether or not the host knew where the car was is irrelevant.
The key to the correct statement of the problem lies in knowing that the host will always eliminate a remaining door with a goat. If this is not known to be true, the action of the host does not provide you with any additional information.
Scientific methods can prove differences exist, and quantify those differences objectively. It simply shows you what is there.
Interpretation of that data as far as 'X proves A is superior to B' is orthogonal to the science.
E.g., scientific study identified the greater occurrence of sickle cell anemia in blacks, with very strong evidence that that was a result of historical disease pressure from malaria. That is objective scientific data. Judgment on whether or not that 'proved' anything regarding superiority or inferiority in comparison to any other ethnic group would be subjective and unscientific by its very nature.
Subjective judgment calls are made within a given philosophical context. Science is controversial with respect to race not because it is inaccurate, but because it potentially puts societal values at odds with each other.
The nature vs. nurture debate is a great example of a similar and related situation.
1. Societal value: All humans are created equal.
2. Societal value: High IQ is better than low IQ.
Consequence: science showing that genetics plays a dominant role in determining IQ causes a societal kernel panic because it either contradicts value 1, or forces society to discard value 2 to preserve value 1 in light of the new information. Note that this has absolutely no bearing on the accuracy of the science itself.
The reality, however, is that every society has values that it clings to so dearly that it will gladly discard science that forces it to confront contradictions with those values.
Some ideas are simply held to be much more valuable than whatever the facts may be.
Everyone is guilty of that from time to time, whether or not we're conscious of it.
That is the common root cause that allowed both historical racism and continues to allow today's hyper-sensitive politically correct atmosphere to coexist with science.
The N-parent post and many of its peers that you're deriving the argument from are incredibly wrong.
The specs for a monitor include, among many other things, 3 relevant attributes that invalidate that line of reasoning. Resolution, refresh rate, and color depth.
If you want to count '2 rgb pixels' for the purposes of determining color depth (i.e., spatial dithering), you can no longer simultaneously claim the same resolution. One dimension will be halved. It would be an, e.g., 960x1200 monitor instead of a 1920x1200.
If you instead use temporal dithering, you can no longer claim the same full screen refresh rate. If it takes 2 full physical screen refreshes to display a single logical screen image, you can only do half as many full screen draws per second. At full physical refresh rate you no longer have the ability to utilize temporal dithering. To throw out a randomly contrived example, It's either 256k colors @ 60hz or 'millions' @ 30hz, absolutely not 'millions' @ 60hz if those numbers are individually but not simultaneously attainable.
It is the industry standard[1] assumption that stats for monitors are given are simultaneously achievable. I.e., a 'millions of colors' monitor advertised as having 1920x800@60hz must be able to meet all individual components of that rating at the same time.
[1] In the same way that 'maximum speed' ratings for cars assumes speed relative to the road surface without tailwinds. The hypothetical monitor advertised as having <INSANELY BIGNUM> colors by the logic in your post would be analogous to advertising a car with 250mph max speed because it can achieve that with a 200mph force 5 hurricane tailwind.
Charity does not save you money, tax deductions or not. It easily can, if you know what you're doing. On paper it will always look like a net negative, but it can save you tons of money by allowing you to recover portions of sunk costs. E.g., donate overstocked goods or goods that are manufactured at extremely low marginal cost valued at full market rate. If you donate software packages with market value X, but marginal cost of production 1/1000x, reducing your taxes through deductions by 1/100x, it looks like a net loss but is almost the same as printing money. This is highly simplified, of course, but gives you the general idea.
There are many other ways to game the system if you have the time, inclination and knowledge (or the right accountant).
My experience has been that the difference between top private U's and state school isn't necessarily in the facilities or the faculty (at least with respect to well-funded state schools), but the degree to which your fellow classmates catalyze the learning process.
Any school, including small community colleges, will have some exceptionally intelligent and talented people, but taking a class with an excellent prof and 2-3 other people who 'get it' is an entirely different experience than when the entire class instantly absorbs the primary principles and the lecturer is constantly fielding insightful questions that illuminate corner cases, the underlying theory, etc. Then, when you're chatting after class, you find that it just so happens that one of your classmates did a graduate-level thesis on related algorithms in his junior year of high school, and you learn even more over some Chick Fil A.
You will occasionally have that kind of experience anywhere, but at the top schools you can have them pretty much daily.
Indeed, most of the high-caliber schools (Ivy league, MIT, a few others) have what is called "need-blind" admissions. What they do is evaluate each applicant independent of ability to pay. If you're qualified to attend, then you get in, and then it's the responsibility of the financial aid department to make sure you can afford to go there. More than half the students at Harvard, for example, receive some form of financial aid (and I think it's been as high as 80% some years) and a large fraction of those students pay nothing at all. Very true. Amusingly, I paid less at Harvard than I would have at my local community college.
In such circumstances, it is good to be angry. You can be angry, or effective at instrumenting change. The more you are of the former, the less successful you'll be at the latter.
If you _ever_ succeed in finding, getting access to and convincing the right person -in a company with more than 20,000 workers- to authorize and buy a specific piece of software you need, _please_ send me your CV.
I do exactly that all the time in a company with 20k+ employees not counting contractors. I've also been granted permanent local admin on several of the more mission-critical systems (and my own laptop and workstation, of course). The main reason that I'm successful at it is because I work with the IT department. E.g., The other day I figured out a fix to a problem they had been re-imaging machines to fix. Instead of lording it over them, which would make me a raging prick and unprofessional as hell, I provided a fairly detailed writeup of root cause, step-by-step walk-through of the process I used to diagnose the problem, and the steps to fix it.
One of the things I've noticed is that many of the developers here (not you, necessarily, but many) seem to have an elitist attitude that only gets worse when dealing with IT types. They seem to feel superior to almost everyone else anyway (e.g., the overwhelming managers/bean counters/salesmen are idiots meme), but the feeling is that IT people should actually have just enough technical knowledge to fully realize how superior they are, so they rub it in all the more.
Sure, I could write the database schema and both server and client apps used by the data managers, but I fully understand and respect that they have a job to do. If I truly need something done that they don't understand how to do, or don't understand the justification for, I take the time to educate them in a respectful manner. This means that sometimes I compromise on my timelines because, wonder of wonders, they have other work to do as well.
I've also always taken extra precautions to be sure that none of the IT people who've helped me with non-standard things get burned by it. That is up to and including a pre-emptive report and justification to upper IS management on the strategic benefit of these types of small variances (which was well-received and blessed by the global head of IS). They may just get called on the carpet to justify this kind of crap to their boss' boss' boss, so it's only fair that I do my part in heading that off so that their management doesn't come down on them like a ton of bricks if their actions are discovered.
Likewise, when the value of these exceptions becomes readily apparent to management, I make sure to mention the help I got from the IT guys.
At this point I get most of my requests approved very quickly, no-questions-asked. Yeah, it's a lot of work in the short-term, but once you've built a good working relationship with both the front-line IT guys (and gals, of course) and their managers, it's smooth sailing.
Keep in mind, this is in a company whose standing policies are normally rigorously enforced and include such things as requiring you to have IT install/configure your printer drivers.
IT certs are cheap, but developer/architect cert suites will easily run 10k+. The full lineup of JBoss developer classes will run you over $20k, and you don't even get a fancy printed jumbo square of toilet paper to frame. If you're good, however, you can bill accordingly as a consultant and the resulting pay differential will let you break even on the courses within a year or two. Also, if you're a fairly high-end consultant, the opportunity cost differential between learning it on your own and taking an accelerated course makes the $20k cheap.
In general, the really good courses are too expensive to take just to add a line to your resume. They're there as a calculated investment option that will genuinely make your time more valuable/save time that could be billable hours (or time off!) rather than reading wikis and forums if you have the ability to absorb and apply the material that they cover.
I've actually read his 'blueprint for change' booklet, read speeches, etc., but it is too high-level even where I agree with him, and some of it sounds good but would be massively counterproductive.
A concrete example of the latter is the plan for government intercession to help organic farmers and actively try to break the national ag system into small regional ones. Japan has effectively done that, and the result is food that is, in many cases, literally 2x the price of the same goods in the US for the same quality, with the dubious benefit that if you're willing to pay 4x+ you can more readily get higher quality stuff than you can easily find in the US. That and the energy cost of food production would skyrocket.
And I say the above having grown up a small family farmer supplying a very small local processor whose distribution area was a county with a whopping 50k residents, as well as having worked for two of the largest international ag businesses in the world. (as a side note, for those who are curious, the former was much more financially rewarding, but my interests in research/informatics and CS make the latter more personally fulfilling).
Further, given that this point of his plan is of tertiary import (if even that), it seems to me that he probably isn't familiar enough with the industry and the economics to have made an informed personal judgment on the issue. Even if it is his personal judgment, I, as someone who has spent his life studying exactly that issue, see an incredibly high economic cost and no economic or social benefit to his plan, and he does not state any justification at all, much less something compelling that might cause me to rethink my position. This leads me to believe that it is just pandering to the very vocal new age base, and further casts doubt on many of the other minor points he makes even if I find them attractive.
Even with issues that I strongly agree on where he seems to have a more substantial position due to the pervasiveness of the related topics in his material, such as expansion of datacomm infrastructure and driving efficiency and accountability of government through better information management tools, there is extremely little on how to actually go about doing it. Publishing the disposition of government funds in a public database is cool, but exactly how will you leverage that into the promised radical departure from the usual politics if opensecrets.org does not? Being able to track donations can be (and reportedly has been) used by larger organizations including corporations to essentially force individuals to contribute to the party line or suffer consequences. Being IT-savvy is a huge win with me, but it also takes a much more substantial plan to convince me that you are not only sincere, but competent enough to carry it through to delivering the promised result. IT provides tools, not solutions to problems, so while I find it cool that he mentions IT issues specifically, I simultaneously find it troubling that his arguments imply that the desired result will necessarily follow from the use of IT. With those types of ideas the devil is all in the details, and details are exactly what are missing. E.g., from page 29 of his booklet:
'Obama will also increase the efficiency of government programs through better use of technology, stronger management that demands accountability, and by leveraging the government's high-volume purchasing power to get lower prices.'
That tells me nothing useful, and if the name and org were swapped I'd think that was a quote from our CIO.
I don't count the above as huge negatives, as they are par for the course for any politician (and CIOs), and I don't feel better about any of the other candidates. It's just that for me, and apparently a lot of others, an unknown quantity is not an automatic win against someone whose position I understand more clearly and disagree with.
It's not true that since I generally disagree with A on all the major issues
It's harder to fix the mess with fewer democrats in office, if you believe that is what will fix the mess. Getting it fixed is more important than taking the blame, for the health of the country. This point, if true (and pretty much everyone believes at least the former is true for the respective party), represents a short-term vs. long-term dilemma. Fixing in the short term is obviously important, but the assignment of blame is important for the strategic success of your party. If you believe that, e.g., it requires a dem majority to fix the problems in the short term, but they take the brunt of the blame for all of the negative events of their term, they may set themselves up to lose the next election which then sets the nation up with a republican majority congress that is, as per the original premise, not able to address the problems of that time.
Essentially, if you believe that it is necessary for your party to be in power for the betterment of the country, it is impossible to completely separate the importance of the good of the country from the importance of the electability of your party, as, by that reasoning, the former only follows from the latter. Hence, by extension, assigning or at least deflecting blame from your party is of critical strategic importance to the good of the country.
People remember Reagan and JFK and Lincoln because they inspired. And hopefully had sound judgment along the way.
The president also toes a lot of talking to heads of other states, to begin the process of entering into treaty, or to convince them to do what we want. I suspect Reagan and JFK were pretty good at that, too. The thing to note is that the greatest diplomatic victories of every one of your example presidents was the result of them successfully taking a hard line and going head-to-head against enemies, not building allied consensus and diplomatic overtures to more-or-less neutral states. Every president attempts the latter (which is also hugely important, don't get me wrong), but the distinguishing factor of Lincoln, Reagan, and JFK's political legacies is that they dealt with their diplomatic adversaries decisively and without significant compromise.
Being a master at finding common ground and building diplomatic consensus and good-will is a huge bonus, but still would not put any hypothetical president on par with those on your short list. For that, he/she has to be capable of drawing the proverbial line in the sand and having both the conviction and the (figurative) stones to know when compromise simply is not an option and would be a tragic disservice to the country despite the risks of taking a stand (violent implosion of the nation, and provoking nuclear war in those particular examples).
I don't know why no one much talks about coattails -- if Obama is the nominee then a lot of dems will get into Senate, House, and state offices. If Clinton is the nominee then a lot more Republicans will show up just to vote against her. That's why I don't understand why more of the superdelegates aren't behind Obama -- the coattails are amazing there.
I'm very leery of that kind of argument. Obama tends to make his arguments and state his positions at a very high level, which simultaneously makes it easier to make them sound good and more difficult to evaluate his competency objectively. Whether or not he can handle the job is a very relevant and wide-open question.
The past 8 years have put the US in a very bad position, but the true fallout has yet to hit the fan. The dems could easily ride the current wave of dissatisfaction into a congressional majority only to set themselves up to channel all the blame when the problems set in motion 4+ years prior really begin to manifest themselves in a big way. That would essentially set them up for an even greater, possibly very long-term reverse backlash in the event of a, e.g., post-withdrawal mideast meltdown.
Given the above, 'because we can ride his coattails' is a poor reason to nominate a candidate if you care at all about the long-term viability of the party (which is exactly the job of the superdelegates).
I've seen setups like that before, and it's basically a case of the day-to-day monitoring equipment being low resolution while the recording is HD streamed to a SAN or recorded to a high quality film loop (e.g, 16mm), and can later be viewed at full res.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry if I seem rude here, but you must not have a very good understanding of your company, or it must be one of the few smaller companies who generally only maintain/propagate existing varieties, or you are being intentionally vague when you say 'bio/ag-tech industry' and don't work in any directly relevant field at all.
Either that or I better tell a bunch of my coworkers that I heard on the internets that their entire international department, dedicated to allelic diversity, does not exist. In that case a bunch of my former coworkers at a previous place of employment will be facing a serious existential crisis as well.
It takes much longer if you care at all about what the meat will taste like afterward--and that's with a sharp skinning knife.
You're actually describing discrimination based on phenotype, which this law is not meant to address.
For every characteristic related to performance of the job at hand, employers will be most interested in the actual expression of your capabilities rather than your underlying genotype, and they can legitimately evaluate those characteristics. Even the well-established ADA cannot touch this (which is why we don't have blind pilots).
Genotype information would be mostly useful with respect to characteristics which have no measurable or readily observable impact on your work, because those are factors that you cannot screen for during an interview/evaluation process. E.g., predisposition for diabetes, mental illness, or other medical complications which may result in higher rates of paid medical leave, etc., at some point in the future.
To use one of your example scenarios, it would be like the NFL turning down (or shortening the contractual commitment to) a prospective quarterback in spite of his impressive college career because he was genetically predisposed to early development of rheumatoid arthritis, and unlikely to be able to perform past the age of 26.
I don't necessarily agree with the law, mind you (especially since I haven't actually read it).
The original parent of this thread was referring to his ad campaign 'daring' identity thieves to steal his identity. The question is whether this provides an affirmative legal defense to any identity thieves who take him up on the challenge and get caught, and, if so, for how long? Until he is no longer CEO of or associated with Lifelock? Until he dies?
The display is 180 degrees for the observer because the observer is not at the center of the sphere. The observer is between the sphere's center and the projection surface, the image can fill 180+ degrees of the observer's view without fully covering the entire near hemisphere.
So I really don't think my claims are so extravagant when they are based on information coming directly from scientific studies. Granted, I am NOT in the biotech industry and do not possess the requisite education to interpret the findings directly. However, to the best of my recollection, these articles were not published in a biased manner against Monsanto specifically. The presentation of the information was not like that, IMO.
The problem is that none of the studies you referred to demonstrate the conclusions implicit in your posts.
The monarch butterfly study (there were actually many), for example, is one of the talking points of anti-GMO groups, but does not apply to field conditions. The studies most likely behind the claims in your posts basically consisted of researchers finding out how much Bt11 corn pollen had to be on the milkweed leaves before butterflies and other lepidoptera feeding on the leaves were adversely affected. The studies (e.g., here or broad overview of the subject here, and a good abstract that directly addresses the initial misunderstanding of the topic here) generally all find negligible, and potential positive impact of Bt11 on monarchs. More comprehensive studies noted correctly that the alternative to Bt11 varieties is broad-spectrum insecticidal sprays that are guaranteed to impact any butterflies in the field. Also, the number of butterflies that actually use cultivated croplands as a habitat has never been determined conclusively, but is known to be relatively low, as clean cultural practices drastically reduce the density of milkweed in croplands vs uncultivated ground, and the much taller corn plants deter butterflies from landing on milkweed in the field.
Similarly with the BGH-1 and dairy cattle: Studies have shown that BGH-1 consumption can raise the incidence of cancer. Monsanto produces rBGH, which is injected into dairy cattle to increase milk yields. Hence, Monsanto increases cancer!... Except not. While I'd rather not get milk from cows injected with rBGH, it's not because of fear of cancer (rather, it's the higher incidence of mastitis = more possible puss in milk.. eww). The milk from cows injected with rBGH does not contain significantly elevated levels of BGH. The variability of BGH in a cow's milk is such that a given cow not on rBGH, on a given week (it varies even for individual cows) can have higher BGH output in its milk than the next cow over that is being dosed with rBGH. If you want to avoid exposure to BGH, you just have to stop drinking cow's milk. Period. Non-rBGH milk will not help you in any way, shape, or form in this regard.
Finally, I've said it a few places before, but the usual portrayal of Percy Schmeiser's case is another example of a massively disingenuous representation of events for several reasons:
Monsanto's reaction was unnecessarily brutal, but he was absolutely not innocent. The best analogy I can think of is a display spilling in front of a shoplifter, who gets caught
That's the whole point of RR crops. You don't spray roundup post-emerge on non-RR crops at all. Drift control is a matter of spraying when the conditions are calm, or using a drift retardant like Sta-Put. This is all Intro to Farming 01. I'd learned this by the time I was growing my own crops to pay for my field trips etc. when I was 9.
Wrong. Just flat out wrong. It's not as common as it was, but MANY farmers harvest seed crops as well as food crops, get them washed and treated, and grow them again.Only for non-hybridized crops, or crops developed and maintained by some universities and family farms. It has been illegal to save licensed seed without a license to do so since 1970.
And 'not as common as it was' is grossly mischaracterizing the situation, which, for e.g., corn, has been closer to 99%/1% hybrid/non-hybrid since the 60's.
Um...what? I'd love to know what you mean by this.Your parent is probably referring to the fact that, with respect to organic vs. GM, organic foods have had many instances of deadly contamination due to organic growing practices (mainly stuff like E. Coli from improperly composted organic waste/fertilizer), whereas there are 0 cases of serious (let alone deadly) reactions to GM foods as a result of their being GM.
I have worked for both major competitors to 'Monsatan' (they are generally seen as eeeevil inside the industry as well, and I'd refuse to work for them), and can tell you that that is not true. New starts are screened in isolated, environmentally contained greenhouses (with an annual power bill in the $X0,000,000 range.. yikes!). On the other hand, many Universities also perform genetic transformation research, generally on much smaller budgets, so I can't speak for those.
Monsanto researched, and it is continuing to do so, ways to ensure that their "products" cannot survive in the wild. This is not a safety measure. This is a DIRECT method of protecting intellectual property rights. As I stated before, their pursuit of this "knowledge" has been reckless with no thoughts given to anything but the profit margins of their company. It is this that makes them "evil" and a threat to all life on Earth.As much as I dislike Monsanto, I can't really fault them for the 'terminator' gene, which is what you're referring to. Initially, they were criticized by people who were afraid that their genetic constructs would propagate uncontrollably. Lo and behold the terminator gene, which makes it impossible for their modified varieties to propagate unintentionally... and they're criticized for that too.
The 'terminator' gene isn't a threat to 'all life on Earth'.. quite the opposite. All carriers die off within 1 generation, limiting the gene's spread.
Where are the hidden pitfalls in Monsanto's research? What might "pop up" in the future? Will it make a difference that their research is conducted with practically no safety and their products are so widely spread across the planet? (emphasis mine)Ok, now you're just spreading FUD here.
You can say what you want to about the benefits of genetically modified food, but the regulatory agencies responsible for it are nothing more than a rubber stamp. How could even a year or two of testing provide any meaningful data? This applies not only to food, but to everything we put in our bodies including pharmaceuticals. Once again, it may sound like I am opposed, and one could claim that I am an ignorant Luddite, but all i want is for longer periods of time to verify research being conducted. That's it. I'm just conservative.I can respect that last position, but you should try to be better informed, or at least acknowledge in which areas you have a lack of knowledge rather than making extravagant claims with no backing.
Cross-pollination is usually not a problem because, unless you are selectively breeding for the crossed plants, the percentage of cross-pollinated plants will comprise a vanishingly small percentage of your crop.
Schmeiser's crop went from 0% RR canola to over 95% RR canola in one year. That requires a focused and deliberate effort. That is the key to why he lost the court battle, as per the last sentence in the text you quoted.
He sprayed around his crop, noticed that some plants survived the drift (these were outcrosses with RR). Next, he sprayed more of his crop, this time deliberately, and then only saved seed from the spray-screened plants. Had he simply saved a random sample of seed from his field (the standard practice for open-pollinated seed saving), the RR canola levels in his next crop would have been insignificant, and the outcome of the case would have been quite different.
Percy Schmeiser's case is significant mainly because at the time, most farmers (including him, obviously) thought that they could easily get away with illegally saving seed. E.g., corn breeders had been doing illegal inbred recoveries of Pioneer Hi-Bred females for decades. Monsanto was just the first—and generally remains the only—seed company that is absolutely ruthless in enforcing the letter of the law even with respect to small-time breeders.
That case marked the beginning of the qualitative trait identification and, now, marker-based germplasm identification techniques that actually make it feasible for a company to identify farmers using its varieties with a level of confidence that they can easily take to court.
It was illegal to do what Schmeiser was doing since the PVPA was passed in 1970, but, until the late 90s, it was generally something you could easily get away with. It is important to note also that this is not something unique to GM crops. Monsanto can and will sue for unlicensed use of its non-GM varieties as well.
The problem is that the pool of available and willing professional expertise is not static. I've already witnessed this at my current workplace, where, after less than 1 year of abandoning a relatively complicated process for a far more simple but grossly less efficient one due to temporarily relaxed requirements, the very same people who used to run the former process are unable to revive it as requirements swing back towards tighter schedules and resources--in fact their efforts to do so have made things even worse.
It is always harder to start (or revive) a program than to keep one running, and even highly skilled people who are capable of the latter may not be able to do the former if it is interrupted or temporarily disbanded for a significant period of time.
If you interrupt an extremely technically demanding program for 5 years, it will either or both take a long time or a director and team of a totally different caliber to bootstrap it again.
The principles described in the above also apply doubly to political will. At this point, NASA's funding is largely due to the legendary inertia of the government. If it were scrapped, it would take someone with an overwhelming mandate and clear, focused vision to build the political consensus and drive it through congress again.
Note that 5 years means that he is scheduling the program's revival in the next presidential term. He does not feel that it should be his responsibility to put humpty dumpty back together again after pushing him off a the wall.
It is hyperbole to say that this would kill manned space exploration, but it may well kill manned space exploration in the US until the next cold war/space race, which we are likely to lose if we try to revive gutted institutions to compete with a program with strong, decades-long unbroken momentum.
Also, speaking to the larger issue of education, 'more funding' is absolutely not a silver bullet that will guarantee better quality, and the education section in his 'blueprint' booklet is totally opaque. It identifies many issues (the easiest part), states proposals to address the issues (also easy), and then does nothing to explain why or how those proposals will work (the only part that really matters).
In all honesty, I think Obama is probably the candidate I dislike the least at this point, but--and I don't hold the following against him directly, per se--it really bothers me that his supporters seem to be under the influence of a Jobs-esque reality distortion field. That people on /. of all places are willing to trivialize the scrapping of a major program of NASA because a politician cries 'think of the children'--without even attempting a strong explanation of why this is necessary--is just sad.
That shows that the mathematicians were correct, actually, as her statement of the problem is missing the critical component. Whether or not the host knew where the car was is irrelevant.
The key to the correct statement of the problem lies in knowing that the host will always eliminate a remaining door with a goat. If this is not known to be true, the action of the host does not provide you with any additional information.
Scientific methods can prove differences exist, and quantify those differences objectively. It simply shows you what is there.
Interpretation of that data as far as 'X proves A is superior to B' is orthogonal to the science.
E.g., scientific study identified the greater occurrence of sickle cell anemia in blacks, with very strong evidence that that was a result of historical disease pressure from malaria. That is objective scientific data. Judgment on whether or not that 'proved' anything regarding superiority or inferiority in comparison to any other ethnic group would be subjective and unscientific by its very nature.
Subjective judgment calls are made within a given philosophical context. Science is controversial with respect to race not because it is inaccurate, but because it potentially puts societal values at odds with each other.
The nature vs. nurture debate is a great example of a similar and related situation.
Consequence: science showing that genetics plays a dominant role in determining IQ causes a societal kernel panic because it either contradicts value 1, or forces society to discard value 2 to preserve value 1 in light of the new information. Note that this has absolutely no bearing on the accuracy of the science itself.
The reality, however, is that every society has values that it clings to so dearly that it will gladly discard science that forces it to confront contradictions with those values.
Some ideas are simply held to be much more valuable than whatever the facts may be.
Everyone is guilty of that from time to time, whether or not we're conscious of it.
That is the common root cause that allowed both historical racism and continues to allow today's hyper-sensitive politically correct atmosphere to coexist with science.
The N-parent post and many of its peers that you're deriving the argument from are incredibly wrong.
The specs for a monitor include, among many other things, 3 relevant attributes that invalidate that line of reasoning. Resolution, refresh rate, and color depth.
If you want to count '2 rgb pixels' for the purposes of determining color depth (i.e., spatial dithering), you can no longer simultaneously claim the same resolution. One dimension will be halved. It would be an, e.g., 960x1200 monitor instead of a 1920x1200.
If you instead use temporal dithering, you can no longer claim the same full screen refresh rate. If it takes 2 full physical screen refreshes to display a single logical screen image, you can only do half as many full screen draws per second. At full physical refresh rate you no longer have the ability to utilize temporal dithering. To throw out a randomly contrived example, It's either 256k colors @ 60hz or 'millions' @ 30hz, absolutely not 'millions' @ 60hz if those numbers are individually but not simultaneously attainable.
It is the industry standard[1] assumption that stats for monitors are given are simultaneously achievable. I.e., a 'millions of colors' monitor advertised as having 1920x800@60hz must be able to meet all individual components of that rating at the same time.
[1] In the same way that 'maximum speed' ratings for cars assumes speed relative to the road surface without tailwinds. The hypothetical monitor advertised as having <INSANELY BIGNUM> colors by the logic in your post would be analogous to advertising a car with 250mph max speed because it can achieve that with a 200mph force 5 hurricane tailwind.
There are many other ways to game the system if you have the time, inclination and knowledge (or the right accountant).
My experience has been that the difference between top private U's and state school isn't necessarily in the facilities or the faculty (at least with respect to well-funded state schools), but the degree to which your fellow classmates catalyze the learning process.
Any school, including small community colleges, will have some exceptionally intelligent and talented people, but taking a class with an excellent prof and 2-3 other people who 'get it' is an entirely different experience than when the entire class instantly absorbs the primary principles and the lecturer is constantly fielding insightful questions that illuminate corner cases, the underlying theory, etc. Then, when you're chatting after class, you find that it just so happens that one of your classmates did a graduate-level thesis on related algorithms in his junior year of high school, and you learn even more over some Chick Fil A.
You will occasionally have that kind of experience anywhere, but at the top schools you can have them pretty much daily.
I do exactly that all the time in a company with 20k+ employees not counting contractors. I've also been granted permanent local admin on several of the more mission-critical systems (and my own laptop and workstation, of course). The main reason that I'm successful at it is because I work with the IT department. E.g., The other day I figured out a fix to a problem they had been re-imaging machines to fix. Instead of lording it over them, which would make me a raging prick and unprofessional as hell, I provided a fairly detailed writeup of root cause, step-by-step walk-through of the process I used to diagnose the problem, and the steps to fix it.
One of the things I've noticed is that many of the developers here (not you, necessarily, but many) seem to have an elitist attitude that only gets worse when dealing with IT types. They seem to feel superior to almost everyone else anyway (e.g., the overwhelming managers/bean counters/salesmen are idiots meme), but the feeling is that IT people should actually have just enough technical knowledge to fully realize how superior they are, so they rub it in all the more.
Sure, I could write the database schema and both server and client apps used by the data managers, but I fully understand and respect that they have a job to do. If I truly need something done that they don't understand how to do, or don't understand the justification for, I take the time to educate them in a respectful manner. This means that sometimes I compromise on my timelines because, wonder of wonders, they have other work to do as well.
I've also always taken extra precautions to be sure that none of the IT people who've helped me with non-standard things get burned by it. That is up to and including a pre-emptive report and justification to upper IS management on the strategic benefit of these types of small variances (which was well-received and blessed by the global head of IS). They may just get called on the carpet to justify this kind of crap to their boss' boss' boss, so it's only fair that I do my part in heading that off so that their management doesn't come down on them like a ton of bricks if their actions are discovered.
Likewise, when the value of these exceptions becomes readily apparent to management, I make sure to mention the help I got from the IT guys.
At this point I get most of my requests approved very quickly, no-questions-asked. Yeah, it's a lot of work in the short-term, but once you've built a good working relationship with both the front-line IT guys (and gals, of course) and their managers, it's smooth sailing.
Keep in mind, this is in a company whose standing policies are normally rigorously enforced and include such things as requiring you to have IT install/configure your printer drivers.
IT certs are cheap, but developer/architect cert suites will easily run 10k+. The full lineup of JBoss developer classes will run you over $20k, and you don't even get a fancy printed jumbo square of toilet paper to frame. If you're good, however, you can bill accordingly as a consultant and the resulting pay differential will let you break even on the courses within a year or two. Also, if you're a fairly high-end consultant, the opportunity cost differential between learning it on your own and taking an accelerated course makes the $20k cheap.
In general, the really good courses are too expensive to take just to add a line to your resume. They're there as a calculated investment option that will genuinely make your time more valuable/save time that could be billable hours (or time off!) rather than reading wikis and forums if you have the ability to absorb and apply the material that they cover.
A concrete example of the latter is the plan for government intercession to help organic farmers and actively try to break the national ag system into small regional ones. Japan has effectively done that, and the result is food that is, in many cases, literally 2x the price of the same goods in the US for the same quality, with the dubious benefit that if you're willing to pay 4x+ you can more readily get higher quality stuff than you can easily find in the US. That and the energy cost of food production would skyrocket.
And I say the above having grown up a small family farmer supplying a very small local processor whose distribution area was a county with a whopping 50k residents, as well as having worked for two of the largest international ag businesses in the world. (as a side note, for those who are curious, the former was much more financially rewarding, but my interests in research/informatics and CS make the latter more personally fulfilling).
Further, given that this point of his plan is of tertiary import (if even that), it seems to me that he probably isn't familiar enough with the industry and the economics to have made an informed personal judgment on the issue. Even if it is his personal judgment, I, as someone who has spent his life studying exactly that issue, see an incredibly high economic cost and no economic or social benefit to his plan, and he does not state any justification at all, much less something compelling that might cause me to rethink my position. This leads me to believe that it is just pandering to the very vocal new age base, and further casts doubt on many of the other minor points he makes even if I find them attractive.
Even with issues that I strongly agree on where he seems to have a more substantial position due to the pervasiveness of the related topics in his material, such as expansion of datacomm infrastructure and driving efficiency and accountability of government through better information management tools, there is extremely little on how to actually go about doing it. Publishing the disposition of government funds in a public database is cool, but exactly how will you leverage that into the promised radical departure from the usual politics if opensecrets.org does not? Being able to track donations can be (and reportedly has been) used by larger organizations including corporations to essentially force individuals to contribute to the party line or suffer consequences. Being IT-savvy is a huge win with me, but it also takes a much more substantial plan to convince me that you are not only sincere, but competent enough to carry it through to delivering the promised result. IT provides tools, not solutions to problems, so while I find it cool that he mentions IT issues specifically, I simultaneously find it troubling that his arguments imply that the desired result will necessarily follow from the use of IT. With those types of ideas the devil is all in the details, and details are exactly what are missing. E.g., from page 29 of his booklet:
'Obama will also increase the efficiency of government programs through better use of technology, stronger management that demands accountability, and by leveraging the government's high-volume purchasing power to get lower prices.'
That tells me nothing useful, and if the name and org were swapped I'd think that was a quote from our CIO.
I don't count the above as huge negatives, as they are par for the course for any politician (and CIOs), and I don't feel better about any of the other candidates. It's just that for me, and apparently a lot of others, an unknown quantity is not an automatic win against someone whose position I understand more clearly and disagree with.
It's not true that since I generally disagree with A on all the major issues
Essentially, if you believe that it is necessary for your party to be in power for the betterment of the country, it is impossible to completely separate the importance of the good of the country from the importance of the electability of your party, as, by that reasoning, the former only follows from the latter. Hence, by extension, assigning or at least deflecting blame from your party is of critical strategic importance to the good of the country. People remember Reagan and JFK and Lincoln because they inspired. And hopefully had sound judgment along the way. The president also toes a lot of talking to heads of other states, to begin the process of entering into treaty, or to convince them to do what we want. I suspect Reagan and JFK were pretty good at that, too. The thing to note is that the greatest diplomatic victories of every one of your example presidents was the result of them successfully taking a hard line and going head-to-head against enemies, not building allied consensus and diplomatic overtures to more-or-less neutral states. Every president attempts the latter (which is also hugely important, don't get me wrong), but the distinguishing factor of Lincoln, Reagan, and JFK's political legacies is that they dealt with their diplomatic adversaries decisively and without significant compromise.
Being a master at finding common ground and building diplomatic consensus and good-will is a huge bonus, but still would not put any hypothetical president on par with those on your short list. For that, he/she has to be capable of drawing the proverbial line in the sand and having both the conviction and the (figurative) stones to know when compromise simply is not an option and would be a tragic disservice to the country despite the risks of taking a stand (violent implosion of the nation, and provoking nuclear war in those particular examples).
I'm very leery of that kind of argument. Obama tends to make his arguments and state his positions at a very high level, which simultaneously makes it easier to make them sound good and more difficult to evaluate his competency objectively. Whether or not he can handle the job is a very relevant and wide-open question.
The past 8 years have put the US in a very bad position, but the true fallout has yet to hit the fan. The dems could easily ride the current wave of dissatisfaction into a congressional majority only to set themselves up to channel all the blame when the problems set in motion 4+ years prior really begin to manifest themselves in a big way. That would essentially set them up for an even greater, possibly very long-term reverse backlash in the event of a, e.g., post-withdrawal mideast meltdown.
Given the above, 'because we can ride his coattails' is a poor reason to nominate a candidate if you care at all about the long-term viability of the party (which is exactly the job of the superdelegates).
I've seen setups like that before, and it's basically a case of the day-to-day monitoring equipment being low resolution while the recording is HD streamed to a SAN or recorded to a high quality film loop (e.g, 16mm), and can later be viewed at full res.