unless you think the evil central banks are suppressing the price of gold and will stop/not be able to do so in the future.
They are losing their grip on the price of gold already. Soon you won't be able to buy it with dollars at all. Then the Feds will try to confiscate it like FDR did.
Imagine how much lead you will be able to get with an oz. of gold when that happens.
Not to mention the possibility that the Feds will impose an asset tax on bank deposits.
My entire family has large amounts of physical cash in various hidden locations. We are converting it to bullion to avoid the upcoming collapse of the dollar. Ammunition, fuel and dried foodstuffs are also on the shopping list.
The nice thing about gold is you can melt it, alloy it and use it in bullets for when things get really bad.
Every kind of recycling incentive program we have is a bandaid to what is really needed -- the prices of things that reflect their true cost to society.
Lifecycle price depends in part on where the item ends up. Landfill is more expensive than recycle. Thus part of the cost has to be assessed at the time of disposal.
Yes bigger is better - this nostalgia for CRTs is misplaced in my opinion. Very few people have screens large enough to show off 1080p properly at the distances they are used at. I know some claim that they have super eyes etc. but that's not the norm, and as you get older those eyes lose performance.
One of the things on my list of things that pisses me off is that I can't get an reasonable flat panel greater than 65". The only non-projector setups above that size are DLPs now, and while I have room for 80+ inches, the color wheels, poor viewing angles and light fall off in the corners.
Vizio what demoing a 72" local dimming LCD however that seems to have not made it to market, at least in the US. It was supposed to be decently priced too.
Agree. The current population level of this planet is too damn high if we are going to have any sort of quality of life. Otherwise what is going on is completely unsustainable. I'd even say 1 billion is excessive. The Club of Rome seems to think maybe half that is about right.
If we continue down the current road there will be another form of population control - the earth's environment will degrade to the point where we will have a 'Great Die-Back'.
It is a truism that no life form can live in it's own waste products. We that's where we are heading and quite rapidly.
I wonder how many people really care? For email and web browsing does it really matter? Would the 50% difference even be noticeable? How many people even measure their speeds?
Now for a heavier user like me and many other slashdotters who do a variety of things on the net the difference is significant, and I hold my ISP accountable when I get more than 10% less than the up to number. Since I have Optimum Online Boost that means 30mbs down and 5 up. Which I get unless there is some serious interruption due to act of God. And if I didn't get it without good reason I'd be on to another ISP, which in this case would be FIOS, which has a good reputation for actually delivering the up to number.
The current state of affairs is simply due to the fact that 50% of advertised is probably good enough for most people so they don't raise a ruckus.
It's been my long-term experience that in general retailers come and go faster than manufacturers. Who would you rather have a warranty from? Trronics R Us or Intel?
I had a Fujitsu hard drive once that was covered the same way. Guess what the retailer went out of business. Generally it has been my experience that the manufacturer is going to be a larger and more stable company than a retailer.
Afghanistan was where Al Qaeda established it training camps and bases, and organized several attacks on the US including 9/11 which killed about 3000 Americans.
Based upon review of the available information I concede that you are correct in the claim that Monsanto has not yet sued a farmer for proven accidental cross pollination. But the key word here is proven, it has not be dis-proven either.
This statement falls flat on its face for two reasons.
1. You are the one claiming Monsanto is suing farmers due to accidental contamination. You have to provide the evidence to back the claim. Otherwise you have not made your argument.
2. It is impossible to disprove your hypothesis. You cannot prove a negative. It's a basic logical fallacy to try to do so.
You still failed to address the other links that back my position that GMO has unforeseen negative impact on the environment.
Historically ALL the activities of man have had unforeseen negative effects on the environment. If this is the bar for adoption of technologies, the discovery of fire would have to have be abandoned and we would have to go back to eating our food raw and living in dark, unheated caves. THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING.
The fact is that technologies are adopted due to a balance of positives and negatives. GMOs will obviously bring some negatives which will have to be controlled and balanced against the positives. It is COMPLETELY STUPID to abandon a technology with the potential of GMOs based on a study which showed an 8.9% decline in soil biomass when it is obvious that adjustments in farming techniques can easily be adopted to ameliorate such effects where found. GMOs offer man a major advance in agriculture which is desperately needed given the strain on our ecology today, and even more so in the future as we head towards a population of 10 billions.
Red Herring. This is NOT what Monsanto sued for. Schmeiser intentionally selected the seeds from these plants and intentionally planted these, to the point where he ended up wit 98% resistant crops. This was NOT accidental contamination. It was clearly willful infringement of Monsanto's patents.
Schmeiser sprayed his Canola with Roundup to select for resistance, saved the seed from the resistant crop and then planted the seed. His Canola was found to be 98% roundup resistant.
Nothing accidental there either.
You have provided no citations of farmers being sued by Monsanto for having accidentally contaminated crops. As I said, that is an urban myth.
He had no contract with Monsanto, and probably found the idea that anyone could actually own a trait in a plant that was clearly growing freely on his land to be silly.
"Probably found the idea to be silly". Rigght. That assumes he was completely ignorant of what his neighbours were doing, and had never read any of Mosnsanto's pitches to Canola growers, and had no other knowledge of farming associated with GMO. But he was still sophisticated enough to come up with a simple way to select for the RoundUp ready gene.
That strains credulity to well past the breaking point.
I call BS. Schmeiser sprayed his crop with RoundUp and kept the seeds from the plants that survived. This isn't merely propagating an existing seed line.
Tests found his crop had 96-98% RoundUp resistance. You don't get anything like that from open pollination in one year.
Yesterday, Monsanto agreed to pay the Schmeisers $660 to settle a small-claims court case they brought against the company for costs associated with removing the patented Roundup Ready canola from their field in 2005.
Schmeiser sprayed his crops with RoundUp, and harvested the seed from the resistant plants for replanting. His plantings were found to be 98% RoundUp resistant. He clearly was intentionally violating Monsanto's patents.
Even worse - he continues to lie about what he did.
That's completely incorrect. Open pollinated hybrids are often sterile and even more commonly fail to breed true. As a result farmers planting these crops cannot plant the seeds from these plants; they always buy new seed. Otherwise the likelihood is that their crop will be useless.
And as far as Monsanto suing farmers for accidental genetic contamination, cite please. As far as I can tell that is an urban myth. There was a case where Monsanto sued a farmer for INTENTION use of such, and won.
There are some things to worry about when it comes to GMO crops. However the amount of misinformation and outright lies in this area is staggering. Your posting happens to contain a couple of the more frequent items in this category.
Slashdot Mirror
after all the OED isn't going to track the movement of slang
That is one of the big reasons for owning the OED. They track all known meanings of a word, and the time periods when the meanings appeared in print.
Look at it this way - sending a lot of people into the ocean to recover resources will solve two problems - too many people and not enough resources.
unless you think the evil central banks are suppressing the price of gold and will stop/not be able to do so in the future.
They are losing their grip on the price of gold already. Soon you won't be able to buy it with dollars at all. Then the Feds will try to confiscate it like FDR did.
Imagine how much lead you will be able to get with an oz. of gold when that happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t1KGMw0lws&feature=related
In periods of famine gold loses it's value, so it isn't a bad tradeoff in a last ditch effort to stay alive.
Not to mention the possibility that the Feds will impose an asset tax on bank deposits.
My entire family has large amounts of physical cash in various hidden locations. We are converting it to bullion to avoid the upcoming collapse of the dollar. Ammunition, fuel and dried foodstuffs are also on the shopping list.
The nice thing about gold is you can melt it, alloy it and use it in bullets for when things get really bad.
Every kind of recycling incentive program we have is a bandaid to what is really needed -- the prices of things that reflect their true cost to society.
Lifecycle price depends in part on where the item ends up. Landfill is more expensive than recycle. Thus part of the cost has to be assessed at the time of disposal.
Yes bigger is better - this nostalgia for CRTs is misplaced in my opinion. Very few people have screens large enough to show off 1080p properly at the distances they are used at. I know some claim that they have super eyes etc. but that's not the norm, and as you get older those eyes lose performance.
One of the things on my list of things that pisses me off is that I can't get an reasonable flat panel greater than 65". The only non-projector setups above that size are DLPs now, and while I have room for 80+ inches, the color wheels, poor viewing angles and light fall off in the corners.
Vizio what demoing a 72" local dimming LCD however that seems to have not made it to market, at least in the US. It was supposed to be decently priced too.
Damn them to hell for not bringing it out.
I heard that RPGs are pretty available in the Middle East.
Agree. The current population level of this planet is too damn high if we are going to have any sort of quality of life. Otherwise what is going on is completely unsustainable. I'd even say 1 billion is excessive. The Club of Rome seems to think maybe half that is about right.
If we continue down the current road there will be another form of population control - the earth's environment will degrade to the point where we will have a 'Great Die-Back'.
It is a truism that no life form can live in it's own waste products. We that's where we are heading and quite rapidly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5iFESMAU58
Passengers? This is America. One dude or dudette per car please.
I wonder how many people really care? For email and web browsing does it really matter? Would the 50% difference even be noticeable? How many people even measure their speeds?
Now for a heavier user like me and many other slashdotters who do a variety of things on the net the difference is significant, and I hold my ISP accountable when I get more than 10% less than the up to number. Since I have Optimum Online Boost that means 30mbs down and 5 up. Which I get unless there is some serious interruption due to act of God. And if I didn't get it without good reason I'd be on to another ISP, which in this case would be FIOS, which has a good reputation for actually delivering the up to number.
The current state of affairs is simply due to the fact that 50% of advertised is probably good enough for most people so they don't raise a ruckus.
Time to make the cell phone system a little smarter. Track the location of a cell phone. If it's moving more than 15 mph disable it. Not that hard.
It's been my long-term experience that in general retailers come and go faster than manufacturers. Who would you rather have a warranty from? Trronics R Us or Intel?
I had a Fujitsu hard drive once that was covered the same way. Guess what the retailer went out of business. Generally it has been my experience that the manufacturer is going to be a larger and more stable company than a retailer.
Let me remind you of the reason.
Afghanistan was where Al Qaeda established it training camps and bases, and organized several attacks on the US including 9/11 which killed about 3000 Americans.
Based upon review of the available information I concede that you are correct in the claim that Monsanto has not yet sued a farmer for proven accidental cross pollination. But the key word here is proven, it has not be dis-proven either.
This statement falls flat on its face for two reasons.
1. You are the one claiming Monsanto is suing farmers due to accidental contamination. You have to provide the evidence to back the claim. Otherwise you have not made your argument.
2. It is impossible to disprove your hypothesis. You cannot prove a negative. It's a basic logical fallacy to try to do so.
You still failed to address the other links that back my position that GMO has unforeseen negative impact on the environment.
Historically ALL the activities of man have had unforeseen negative effects on the environment. If this is the bar for adoption of technologies, the discovery of fire would have to have be abandoned and we would have to go back to eating our food raw and living in dark, unheated caves. THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING.
The fact is that technologies are adopted due to a balance of positives and negatives. GMOs will obviously bring some negatives which will have to be controlled and balanced against the positives. It is COMPLETELY STUPID to abandon a technology with the potential of GMOs based on a study which showed an 8.9% decline in soil biomass when it is obvious that adjustments in farming techniques can easily be adopted to ameliorate such effects where found. GMOs offer man a major advance in agriculture which is desperately needed given the strain on our ecology today, and even more so in the future as we head towards a population of 10 billions.
Red Herring. This is NOT what Monsanto sued for. Schmeiser intentionally selected the seeds from these plants and intentionally planted these, to the point where he ended up wit 98% resistant crops. This was NOT accidental contamination. It was clearly willful infringement of Monsanto's patents.
1. http://www.organicconsumers.org/Monsanto/farmerssued.cfm
2. http://nelsonfarm.net/
Farmers saving soybean seeds in violation of contract. NOT accidental contamination.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser
Schmeiser sprayed his Canola with Roundup to select for resistance, saved the seed from the resistant crop and then planted the seed. His Canola was found to be 98% roundup resistant.
Nothing accidental there either.
You have provided no citations of farmers being sued by Monsanto for having accidentally contaminated crops. As I said, that is an urban myth.
He had no contract with Monsanto, and probably found the idea that anyone could actually own a trait in a plant that was clearly growing freely on his land to be silly.
"Probably found the idea to be silly". Rigght. That assumes he was completely ignorant of what his neighbours were doing, and had never read any of Mosnsanto's pitches to Canola growers, and had no other knowledge of farming associated with GMO. But he was still sophisticated enough to come up with a simple way to select for the RoundUp ready gene.
That strains credulity to well past the breaking point.
I call BS. Schmeiser sprayed his crop with RoundUp and kept the seeds from the plants that survived. This isn't merely propagating an existing seed line.
Tests found his crop had 96-98% RoundUp resistance. You don't get anything like that from open pollination in one year.
Toronto Globe and Mail
Yesterday, Monsanto agreed to pay the Schmeisers $660 to settle a small-claims court case they brought against the company for costs associated with removing the patented Roundup Ready canola from their field in 2005.
Schmeiser sprayed his crops with RoundUp, and harvested the seed from the resistant plants for replanting. His plantings were found to be 98% RoundUp resistant. He clearly was intentionally violating Monsanto's patents.
Even worse - he continues to lie about what he did.
The guy is schmuck.
That's completely incorrect. Open pollinated hybrids are often sterile and even more commonly fail to breed true. As a result farmers planting these crops cannot plant the seeds from these plants; they always buy new seed. Otherwise the likelihood is that their crop will be useless.
And as far as Monsanto suing farmers for accidental genetic contamination, cite please. As far as I can tell that is an urban myth. There was a case where Monsanto sued a farmer for INTENTION use of such, and won.
There are some things to worry about when it comes to GMO crops. However the amount of misinformation and outright lies in this area is staggering. Your posting happens to contain a couple of the more frequent items in this category.
It' simple. Don't think with the small head.
Otherwise I want to see pictures so I can see whether or not it was worth it.