In 2007, Monsanto sold Monsanto Choice Genetics to Newsham Genetics LC of West Des Moines, Iowa. The transaction was completed in November 2007, and Monsanto is no longer in the swine breeding business.
Since a Greenpeace publicity announcement in 2005, rumors have continued to circulate among activists and on the internet that Monsanto is trying to patent pig genes. When Monsanto owned the business, the company performed research work for a patent application related to a specific gene marker for a pig trait, but not for the trait itself, and also a patent application for a unique set of breeding processes, including an artificial insemination method. Monsanto never filed a patent application for a pig gene.
Thereâ(TM)s been some rather wild speculation that these patent applications would prohibit pig farmers from breeding lines of pigs to which they had always freely bred. This isnâ(TM)t true. Any claims issued from these patent applications would apply to only animals and their offspring which had been bred using marker technology covered by patent claims.
In any case, the sale to Newsham Genetics included any and all swine-related patents, patent applications, and all other intellectual property. Weâ(TM)re out of the pig business.
someone who has Russian as a first language and Chinese as a second will most likely be better off to code than someone with merely English as a first language
evidence:
being bilingual or a polyglot is beneficial to thinking and memory skills
understanding another language (even a dead one like Latin) helps you understand that information & logic can be portrayed multiple different ways with different vocabularies & grammar rules
gmusicbrowser is nice. might not be what you're looking for, but it's the only linux music app i'm happy with (and i've tried damn near 20 of 'em).
when i was running windows, i used foobar2k - winamp is about as customizable as a cinder block compared to foobar. the ability to customize is what led me to foobar, ending my long love affair with winamp. gmusicbrowser is the only potential replacement i've found for foobar (which works flawlessly in the several versions on wine i've tried it on).
i'd think that the cost of employees, rent, power, etc. at a B&M store would be FAR greater per rental than at a warehouse, even with the (small) price of postage added to the warehouse's operating costs...
I don't buy music... but not for the reasons you might think. My reasons include 1) today's new stuff sucks, 2) I am not moved by music as much as other people seem to be, 3) I realize that music is not a possession but a thing to be licensed but is owned and even controlled by someone else.
i take no issue with points 2 and 3, but there's a ridiculous amount of music that is both new and good - it's just not being pimped by mtv or whatever casey kasem clone happens to be favored by clear channel at the moment.
granted, most of my music collection is older than a decade, and it does seem that the art to detritus ratio has tilted towards the britney spears - 50 cent end of the scale, but the good shit is still out there. off the top of my head, here's a list of artists who have released excellent albums in the last 2 years...
Drive-By Truckers Citay Mogwai Modest Mouse Solar Fields Iron & Wine Explosions in the Sky The Bees
ok, that wasn't quite as impressive a list as i had hoped, but i'm too lazy to search. my point remains, however - there is good music being made now, despite the saddening signal to noise ratio.
The public is being led around by the nose by a LOT of popular notions. People think they need a "good credit rating" (aka the "I love Debt rating") and they think they need all of the crap and nonsense they buy. I am guilty of all of this same stupidity but I see it and increasingly fight this addiction to plastic. I gave up debt financing on anything but houses and cars and will soon give up on debt financing for cars as well. Spending cash and watching your checking and savings accounts erode with each individual item is far more sobering than watching "bills paid" come out of my accounts. (We see bills as necessary to pay and so we don't anguish about that as much right?)
now that, however, is spot on. i've never had a credit card, and never bought a car i couldn't pay for with cash on the spot. accordingly, i've never had a really nice car, but i've never had a jalopy either. my only worry is buying land, which i'm not sure i'll be able to do without credit, or with my heroic lack of credit history. luckily i want to live in the middle of goddamn nowhere, where land tends to be pretty cheap...
while i agree with you about the audible difference between lossy and lossless formats on a portable music player, the palatable difference between tap water, well water, and spring water (from the source, not bottled supposed-spring water) is huge.
i work in designated wilderness areas, and there is nothing like the taste of water that you can see coming out of the ground. even from spring to spring the taste varies greatly.
the best water in the world comes from the spring at tom taylor cabin, in the marble mountain wilderness, klamath national forest.
i've never done any drug that loosened my innate understanding of right and wrong, made me devalue my morality, or in any way removed any 'reservations' that i had about amoral behavior. (and i've done a wide variety of drugs, albeit mainly hallucinogens, and only after extensive research into their side effects and addictive properties). sure, some of my reservations about conforming to societal norms fell away, but nothing that would lead me to behavior that would harm another person (unless it is true that seeing me nude will scar you for life).
and obviously my perception of and interaction with the world changed - but i was lucid enough to realize that it had changed, and that the drug had changed it; moreover, i was lucid enough for the "real me" to still be in the driver's seat of the "high me".
you can buy a gun without anyone teaching you how to use it safely. A GUN, for fook's sake. for a more apt analogy, a bottle of wine doesn't come with any safety training - just the knowledge that you better use it responsibly. why can't the same be true for a doobie?
A physical CD plus case and booklet is under a dollar to press in quantity, so the physical disc isn't actually a huge part of the price tag anyway.
whereas arranging some bits is what, a tiny fraction of a penny?
so if a record goes platinum via purely digital means vs. going platinum via purely physical media, the record companies decrease operating costs for that album by $1,000,000.
Although I'll agree, large parts will overlap, there is quite a big area on the 'drugs-part' only that would make doing something like committing murder much more likely to "succeed".
kind of like having a weapon does? what's next, we outlaw blunt objects?
I'd have a hard time sleeping when my kids are out 'partying'.
not to burst your bubble, or rob you of your sleep, but when i was underage it was MUCH easier to get illegal drugs than it was alcohol. the black market doesn't check your id.
Well, no, a cult that is known for murdering it's own members and having a policy of "anything goes" against it's detractors does get a pretty high ranking in the list of things to be outraged at.
oh, you mean like christianity, islam, etc...
personally, i'm more concerned with things like trillions of dollars and thousands of lives being frivolously thrown away in an unnecessary war, the fact that the global economy is on the verge of "systemic failure," erosion of civil rights, the fact that i have to decide between getting health care and paying off my student loans, the drug war (and other similar legislation that prevents me from having dominion over my own body), the fact that george w. bush can be elected president of the US (and the fact that 1/3 of the country thinks he's hitler, and another 1/3 thinks he was divinely appointed), etc.
like i said, i recognize the insidious nature of scientology. i just have better things to worry about than trying to save people like cruise and travolta from their hilarious lack of intelligence.
People lose their freedoms when they join the other mob you mention, please try to keep up.
please try to think of the definition of freedom. without the liberty to be a complete dumbass, treat a (pretty poor) sci-fi writer as a prophet, and give your wealth and free will to his religion - it ain't really freedom. if one of the side effects of freedom is fools throwing themselves on a proverbial sword, so be it.
best of luck on your crusade to rid the world of idiocy.
The best punishment would be to order him to undergo some psychoanalysis. We should recommend some therapists, that would help.
noted. i imagine some of my friends would concur.
You know, the protests in the 60's were also full of "foolish kids" but they changed the world in many ways for the better. I don't see anything wrong with people banding together to fight against evil.
nor do i. i just think there are:
greater evils to be fought
more pressing evils to be fought
evils that directly affect all of us to be fought
and the notion that anonymous is "unlike anything the world has seen before" is, i'm sorry, pretty funny. especially coming on the tail of you comparing them to 60's radicalism. and really, it only reinforces my belief that many (people in general, not just those in anonymous) have little sense of history, and haven't put much thought into the human condition, nor the benefits and perils of freedom.
i just think there's an awful lof of crap to be outraged at in our world, and despite the insidious nature of scientology, it's still pretty low on the list.
i bought a razer mouse. not for the blue lights (the only reason i installed the razer driver was to turn the lights off), the gaming gimmick angle, or the razer name, but because it was the only mouse in either of the stores i went to that had the buttons i needed (5) and was actually comfortable in my hand and on my skin. i felt like a chump shelling out 40 bucks for a mouse, but after 2 years with it, i'm VERY glad that i did - especially when i use someone else's computer and their $17 mouse.
without a comfortable, durable interface, a computer is pretty damn useless, imo.
Why I will not vote for McCain, from his own mouth:
"I would rather have a clean government than one...where 'First Amendment rights' are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice I'd rather have a clean government."
OK, so a clean government is, to McCain, far more important than our first amendment rights. Odd, to say the least, but possibly understandable.
Or at least it is until you look a little closer. Charles Keating. A campaign staffed and run by lobbyists. An affair with a lobbyist. The pick of Palin, who abused her position as governor for personal ends.
Alone, his stated position that a clean government is more important than our first amendment rights gives me great pause. Combined with his actions, which make it seem that he doesn't really give a damn about clean government, i find it rather frightening.
How can you vote for someone who sneers at the first amendment?
If you use "privacy mode", or otherwise blow your cookies away between sessions, we won't know who you are the next time you come to the site. So we have nothing to go on about who you are, so we'll probably end up showing you products that you probably aren't interested in.
showing me products that i'm probably not interested in is the essence of marketing. because really, what's the point of spending money advertising something that i'll probably buy anyway?
on that note, i already have 99.7% of the stuff i need. leave me alone. if you really want to sell me something, make an implantable adblock chip, so i can drive on the freeway, watch a movie, wait for the bus, drink a beer, etc. without wincing at every gawdy, intrusive ad that's shoved in my face. my soul needs a breather.
Slashdot Mirror
from http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto_today/for_the_record/pig_patent.asp
In 2007, Monsanto sold Monsanto Choice Genetics to Newsham Genetics LC of West Des Moines, Iowa. The transaction was completed in November 2007, and Monsanto is no longer in the swine breeding business.
Since a Greenpeace publicity announcement in 2005, rumors have continued to circulate among activists and on the internet that Monsanto is trying to patent pig genes. When Monsanto owned the business, the company performed research work for a patent application related to a specific gene marker for a pig trait, but not for the trait itself, and also a patent application for a unique set of breeding processes, including an artificial insemination method. Monsanto never filed a patent application for a pig gene.
Thereâ(TM)s been some rather wild speculation that these patent applications would prohibit pig farmers from breeding lines of pigs to which they had always freely bred. This isnâ(TM)t true. Any claims issued from these patent applications would apply to only animals and their offspring which had been bred using marker technology covered by patent claims.
In any case, the sale to Newsham Genetics included any and all swine-related patents, patent applications, and all other intellectual property. Weâ(TM)re out of the pig business.
claim:
someone who has Russian as a first language and Chinese as a second will most likely be better off to code than someone with merely English as a first language
evidence:
being bilingual or a polyglot is beneficial to thinking and memory skills
understanding another language (even a dead one like Latin) helps you understand that information & logic can be portrayed multiple different ways with different vocabularies & grammar rules
your reading comprehension:
you're saying that slashdot needs to be slashdotted before we all snow crash?
i'm sure that's sup-dawg-memeable, but i'd like to keep what little remains of my self-respect.
gmusicbrowser is nice. might not be what you're looking for, but it's the only linux music app i'm happy with (and i've tried damn near 20 of 'em).
when i was running windows, i used foobar2k - winamp is about as customizable as a cinder block compared to foobar. the ability to customize is what led me to foobar, ending my long love affair with winamp. gmusicbrowser is the only potential replacement i've found for foobar (which works flawlessly in the several versions on wine i've tried it on).
it's "flynt".
i'd think that the cost of employees, rent, power, etc. at a B&M store would be FAR greater per rental than at a warehouse, even with the (small) price of postage added to the warehouse's operating costs...
I don't buy music... but not for the reasons you might think. My reasons include 1) today's new stuff sucks, 2) I am not moved by music as much as other people seem to be, 3) I realize that music is not a possession but a thing to be licensed but is owned and even controlled by someone else.
i take no issue with points 2 and 3, but there's a ridiculous amount of music that is both new and good - it's just not being pimped by mtv or whatever casey kasem clone happens to be favored by clear channel at the moment.
granted, most of my music collection is older than a decade, and it does seem that the art to detritus ratio has tilted towards the britney spears - 50 cent end of the scale, but the good shit is still out there. off the top of my head, here's a list of artists who have released excellent albums in the last 2 years...
Drive-By Truckers
Citay
Mogwai
Modest Mouse
Solar Fields
Iron & Wine
Explosions in the Sky
The Bees
ok, that wasn't quite as impressive a list as i had hoped, but i'm too lazy to search. my point remains, however - there is good music being made now, despite the saddening signal to noise ratio.
The public is being led around by the nose by a LOT of popular notions. People think they need a "good credit rating" (aka the "I love Debt rating") and they think they need all of the crap and nonsense they buy. I am guilty of all of this same stupidity but I see it and increasingly fight this addiction to plastic. I gave up debt financing on anything but houses and cars and will soon give up on debt financing for cars as well. Spending cash and watching your checking and savings accounts erode with each individual item is far more sobering than watching "bills paid" come out of my accounts. (We see bills as necessary to pay and so we don't anguish about that as much right?)
now that, however, is spot on. i've never had a credit card, and never bought a car i couldn't pay for with cash on the spot. accordingly, i've never had a really nice car, but i've never had a jalopy either. my only worry is buying land, which i'm not sure i'll be able to do without credit, or with my heroic lack of credit history. luckily i want to live in the middle of goddamn nowhere, where land tends to be pretty cheap...
while i agree with you about the audible difference between lossy and lossless formats on a portable music player, the palatable difference between tap water, well water, and spring water (from the source, not bottled supposed-spring water) is huge.
i work in designated wilderness areas, and there is nothing like the taste of water that you can see coming out of the ground. even from spring to spring the taste varies greatly.
the best water in the world comes from the spring at tom taylor cabin, in the marble mountain wilderness, klamath national forest.
didn't neal stephenson imply this a decade ago?
i don't think you've done many drugs.
i've never done any drug that loosened my innate understanding of right and wrong, made me devalue my morality, or in any way removed any 'reservations' that i had about amoral behavior. (and i've done a wide variety of drugs, albeit mainly hallucinogens, and only after extensive research into their side effects and addictive properties). sure, some of my reservations about conforming to societal norms fell away, but nothing that would lead me to behavior that would harm another person (unless it is true that seeing me nude will scar you for life).
and obviously my perception of and interaction with the world changed - but i was lucid enough to realize that it had changed, and that the drug had changed it; moreover, i was lucid enough for the "real me" to still be in the driver's seat of the "high me".
you can buy a gun without anyone teaching you how to use it safely. A GUN, for fook's sake. for a more apt analogy, a bottle of wine doesn't come with any safety training - just the knowledge that you better use it responsibly. why can't the same be true for a doobie?
that's the second time in this thread i've seen the non-word "spreaded."
you have failured.
A physical CD plus case and booklet is under a dollar to press in quantity, so the physical disc isn't actually a huge part of the price tag anyway.
whereas arranging some bits is what, a tiny fraction of a penny?
so if a record goes platinum via purely digital means vs. going platinum via purely physical media, the record companies decrease operating costs for that album by $1,000,000.
i'd say that's pretty damn significant.
no on 15!
Although I'll agree, large parts will overlap, there is quite a big area on the 'drugs-part' only that would make doing something like committing murder much more likely to "succeed".
kind of like having a weapon does? what's next, we outlaw blunt objects?
I'd have a hard time sleeping when my kids are out 'partying'.
not to burst your bubble, or rob you of your sleep, but when i was underage it was MUCH easier to get illegal drugs than it was alcohol. the black market doesn't check your id.
Wahington Post looks in the mirror, attacks self for unfair liberal bias; denies existence of free will.
Sorry if I'm not impressed.
douchebag: i don't believe in private property.
me: ok, give me your shoes.
douchebag: no, they're mine!
(i actually had this conversation irl)
Well, no, a cult that is known for murdering it's own members and having a policy of "anything goes" against it's detractors does get a pretty high ranking in the list of things to be outraged at.
oh, you mean like christianity, islam, etc...
personally, i'm more concerned with things like trillions of dollars and thousands of lives being frivolously thrown away in an unnecessary war, the fact that the global economy is on the verge of "systemic failure," erosion of civil rights, the fact that i have to decide between getting health care and paying off my student loans, the drug war (and other similar legislation that prevents me from having dominion over my own body), the fact that george w. bush can be elected president of the US (and the fact that 1/3 of the country thinks he's hitler, and another 1/3 thinks he was divinely appointed), etc.
like i said, i recognize the insidious nature of scientology. i just have better things to worry about than trying to save people like cruise and travolta from their hilarious lack of intelligence.
People lose their freedoms when they join the other mob you mention, please try to keep up.
please try to think of the definition of freedom. without the liberty to be a complete dumbass, treat a (pretty poor) sci-fi writer as a prophet, and give your wealth and free will to his religion - it ain't really freedom. if one of the side effects of freedom is fools throwing themselves on a proverbial sword, so be it.
best of luck on your crusade to rid the world of idiocy.
The best punishment would be to order him to undergo some psychoanalysis. We should recommend some therapists, that would help.
noted. i imagine some of my friends would concur.
You know, the protests in the 60's were also full of "foolish kids" but they changed the world in many ways for the better. I don't see anything wrong with people banding together to fight against evil.
nor do i. i just think there are:
and the notion that anonymous is "unlike anything the world has seen before" is, i'm sorry, pretty funny. especially coming on the tail of you comparing them to 60's radicalism. and really, it only reinforces my belief that many (people in general, not just those in anonymous) have little sense of history, and haven't put much thought into the human condition, nor the benefits and perils of freedom.
i just think there's an awful lof of crap to be outraged at in our world, and despite the insidious nature of scientology, it's still pretty low on the list.
but that's just me.
i bought a razer mouse. not for the blue lights (the only reason i installed the razer driver was to turn the lights off), the gaming gimmick angle, or the razer name, but because it was the only mouse in either of the stores i went to that had the buttons i needed (5) and was actually comfortable in my hand and on my skin. i felt like a chump shelling out 40 bucks for a mouse, but after 2 years with it, i'm VERY glad that i did - especially when i use someone else's computer and their $17 mouse.
without a comfortable, durable interface, a computer is pretty damn useless, imo.
a bunch of foolish kids with nothing better to do than form a mob, and be outraged at the freedom to be foolish and join another mob.
irony floats off, unnoticed.
he got real lucky once and was smart enough to cash out while he was ahead.
the cashing out while ahead is what i'm impressed with. it's kind of a rare intelligence.
of course, maybe that's just because i checked out a long time ago, without bothering to get ahead first...
Why I will not vote for McCain, from his own mouth:
"I would rather have a clean government than one...where 'First Amendment rights' are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice I'd rather have a clean government."
source
OK, so a clean government is, to McCain, far more important than our first amendment rights. Odd, to say the least, but possibly understandable.
Or at least it is until you look a little closer. Charles Keating. A campaign staffed and run by lobbyists. An affair with a lobbyist. The pick of Palin, who abused her position as governor for personal ends.
Alone, his stated position that a clean government is more important than our first amendment rights gives me great pause. Combined with his actions, which make it seem that he doesn't really give a damn about clean government, i find it rather frightening.
How can you vote for someone who sneers at the first amendment?
from Jeffrey Kaplan: Bloptar!
holy flamebait summary, batman!
If you use "privacy mode", or otherwise blow your cookies away between sessions, we won't know who you are the next time you come to the site. So we have nothing to go on about who you are, so we'll probably end up showing you products that you probably aren't interested in.
showing me products that i'm probably not interested in is the essence of marketing. because really, what's the point of spending money advertising something that i'll probably buy anyway?
on that note, i already have 99.7% of the stuff i need. leave me alone. if you really want to sell me something, make an implantable adblock chip, so i can drive on the freeway, watch a movie, wait for the bus, drink a beer, etc. without wincing at every gawdy, intrusive ad that's shoved in my face. my soul needs a breather.