The lawsuits you're talking about do not exist. Monsanto isn't running around suing people who accidentally grow contaminated seeds, unaware that they have some. The only lawsuit thus far is against somehow who knowingly obtained them, and used Round-up on them to kill off unmodified seeds.
(Remember - it's pitifully easy to determine whether a farmer is knowingly abusing the patented seeds and is thus worthy of being sued. Are they spraying their unlicensed crop with Round-up? If they're not, there's no legitimate reason for anyone to sue, and Monsanto doesn't appear to be suing anyone who isn't using Round-up. There's no legitimate reason for a farmer to spray a healthy, "natural", crop with Round-up unless they want to destroy their own crop.)
The argument against terminator seeds is that if Round-up Ready seed ever becomes the default, terminator seeds would endanger the world's food supply. That's rather more serious than preventing non-existent lawsuits.
It's not a matter of "he ought to have known". He did know. He'd previously licensed the seeds. And he used Round-up to kill off non-Round-up-Ready seeds.
I'd have had some sympathy if he'd not used Round-up with the seeds, which ordinarily would kill the crop and is therefore something you would never normally do. But as it is, he wanted the seeds, he knew they existed, he wanted to exploit their advantages, he deliberately went out of his way to obtain them by means other than getting them from Monsanto, and he made use of their defining property.
Well, the summary actually seems to imply that. If there's been a 25% move away from sugared soda, why hasn't there been a noticeable reduction in the obesity rate?
(Coca-cola has little incentive, BTW, to propagate the notion that diet drinks don't help people lose weight. They've become very adept at selling the stuff.)
I'm not going to suggest the notion "Diet doesn't matter" is right, because I suspect it's a major factor, but I think it's simplistic to blame, for example, regular sugared Cola drinks for the increase.
I would say RFA completely invalidates your point. Governments did act relatively quickly and didn't try to shield the producers.
By comparison, the free-market+lawsuits route was used for asbestos, tobacco, and leaded gasoline. In all three cases, eventually the government had to step in, after decades of inaction and of legal routes going nowhere and making little or no difference.
If something is shown to be harmful, the government has a right to step in. We shouldn't have to wait for lawsuits - which can take decades, which address only specific issues, which can cost less to the manufacturers than ending the businesses that cause the problems, which can fail for reasons entirely unrelated to the harm causes to the victims - to somehow shut down the worst offenders.
That's great, but you're talking about Europe. The FCC doesn't give a crap what European GSM phones use, that's out of its jurisdiction. In the US, 900MHz is not used for GSM. 900MHz in the US is used for a variety of reasons, but there's a big fat ISM band in the middle there, and the FCC doesn't mind if you use it.
At one point a decade or so ago, most new US cordless phones used 900MHz.
I'm not sure how you'd "pretend" to be a terrorist, outside of a context where people know you're not (for example, acting in a movie.) You might pretend you support a cause you don't, but you're either causing fear in support of a political cause by threatening death or you're not.
If I tweet "The infidel Brits will soon know the error of their ways! On September 6th, stay away from the Empire Trade Tower if you want to live! #irishislamicrepublic" then (assuming Irish Islamic Republicanism is a real movement, and the Empire Trade Tower is a thing, the blowing up of which is considered serious) I'm obviously contributing a little to fear of, uh, IRIS/IRIL regardless of whether I'm doing it hunched over in a Internet Mosque Cafe in Londonderry fuming about Brits, or have just finished reading a 4chan thread and think it'd make great lulz.
Terrorism is terrorism. Death threats for a political cause are terrorism regardless of whether your intent is to go through with them.
If Poettering uses the same communication methods as everyone else for managing his highly used open source project, then systemd is doing this because it can only get ahead without feedback.
If, OTOH, Poettering goes so far as to organize a public conference on his project, then his project is "doing too much".
Did you ever think, perhaps, that the conference is a way to get commentary and feedback on a project that's thus far been fairly controversial (largely for ridiculous reasons by people who think sysv init is a good idea?)
Good for you... most people have accepted them in return for free stuff.
Yeah, but Windows isn't free unless you're a member of their beta testing program. Windows 10 is a "free" upgrade, but that means you don't have to pay an additional fee for the update from your current version, not that you don't have to buy Windows to begin with.
I don't want any functionality that was present in Windows 7 to be ad-burdened in 10, even if it is just Freecell.
Spyware
I think a better complaint would have been that this seems to be mostly a misrepresentation of what Microsoft is doing, not that "most people don't care" (so we shouldn't?)
From what I could see, the features that actually invade privacy are optional. The collage was highly misleading, including such things as "Windows Update being mandatory" and "Malware protection only being able to turn off temporarily" as "privacy violations" when they're actually both just things that suck.
Personally I rather liked the 8.1 way, which was kinda similar to how Android does things if you haven't set a preference yet - applications could cause a dialog to appear that showed them the available applications to do X and set one of them as the default.
I'd like Microsoft to change it back to that. Who knows, if we put enough pressure on them, rather than demand they stop beating their wives, they might do it.
I don't think so, browsers have always, until now, been able to set themselves as default, even back during the Netscape wars.
And they're not asserting ownership of your computer. What they've done is created a hamfisted (and biased towards Microsoft - yeah, I don't like it either) interface that replaces third parties modifying your computer with or without your consent. They had a better system in Windows 8.1, and should revert to that, but nonetheless, I don't actually like the idea of a browser being able to set itself up as default. I prefer myself to make that decision. Fortunately, the mainstream browsers have, until now, always at least asked for permission before changing the defaults, but that's not something they should have been allowed to do to begin with.
If we want this changed, we need to be a little less hyperbolic, because the issue here is that the new change isn't user friendly and is biased towards Microsoft, not ludicrous claims that Microsoft is taking control of your PC in some way it wasn't before. If you complain about the latter, expect your ticket to be closed with a "INVALID. Not actually a description of a real problem."
I don't think anything's changed about the degree to which IE or NewIE is part of the OS since Windows 7. What's changed is that browsers can't set themselves to be the default any more - the user has to do it explicitly in the system settings.
Personally, I thought the Windows 8.1 way of doing it was better. But I don't think this is as terrible a change as being suggested.
I bought my iPod long before the iTMS was announced. The thing succeeded because it was easy to use, manage, and it could store your entire music collection (well, most people's entire music collection.) There were other MP3 players with one or two of those features, but not all three. The iPod needed to be a success for Apple to be able to sell the iTMS (the concept that is), to the music industry.
Electric cars I suspect could have the same selling point (well, minus the storage of all music. On the other hand, I don't know, you could put a big SSD in each one I guess) - part of the point is that this tremendously complex confusing device should be a hell of a lot easier to maintain and - until self driving becomes standard - drive.
I'm guessing they mean something else by "memory protection", as a built in MMU is hardly unusual and I suspect has been part of SPARCs since the early days.
For example: the thread here is all about how big bad megacorps have been using sophistry to hide dangerous things on their labels.
And why did this come up? Because someone wanted a giant warning that a product may contain GMOs on every product this applies to.
That's a wacko position. Why is it wacko? Well, because it does nothing to help the problem they subsequently claim to want addressed, that labels are often misleading. It actually makes the label more misleading, by highlighting a non-essential fact, giving weight to it, and pretending it's something the buyer should be concerned about, while leaving the the manufacturers to continue to do whatever they want with the ingredient list.
GMOs that do not make significant changes to a product that would leave unusual chemicals in them are not dangerous. Their presence in a food product shouldn't be highlighted as something for a consumer to be concerned about. Doing so does not give the consumer more options, it confuses them and draws attention away from real health issues like sugars and potentially harmful fats.
Well, I think we are getting better at converting DC voltages, which is why HVDC is being used for transmission lines for example.
I suspect the reason is in part portable electronics. We're trying to eke out as much power as possible for multivoltage devices (one voltage for the processor, another for the screen, another for the HDD (portable electronics includes laptops too...) another for the USB bus, etc) from a single (DC it goes without saying) battery. The amount of R&D into the voltage conversion field over the last thirty years must have been extraordinary, yet not sexy enough to warrant much media coverage.
Slashdot Mirror
The lawsuits you're talking about do not exist. Monsanto isn't running around suing people who accidentally grow contaminated seeds, unaware that they have some. The only lawsuit thus far is against somehow who knowingly obtained them, and used Round-up on them to kill off unmodified seeds.
(Remember - it's pitifully easy to determine whether a farmer is knowingly abusing the patented seeds and is thus worthy of being sued. Are they spraying their unlicensed crop with Round-up? If they're not, there's no legitimate reason for anyone to sue, and Monsanto doesn't appear to be suing anyone who isn't using Round-up. There's no legitimate reason for a farmer to spray a healthy, "natural", crop with Round-up unless they want to destroy their own crop.)
The argument against terminator seeds is that if Round-up Ready seed ever becomes the default, terminator seeds would endanger the world's food supply. That's rather more serious than preventing non-existent lawsuits.
It's not a matter of "he ought to have known". He did know. He'd previously licensed the seeds. And he used Round-up to kill off non-Round-up-Ready seeds.
I'd have had some sympathy if he'd not used Round-up with the seeds, which ordinarily would kill the crop and is therefore something you would never normally do. But as it is, he wanted the seeds, he knew they existed, he wanted to exploit their advantages, he deliberately went out of his way to obtain them by means other than getting them from Monsanto, and he made use of their defining property.
This wasn't accidental patent infringement.
Well, the summary actually seems to imply that. If there's been a 25% move away from sugared soda, why hasn't there been a noticeable reduction in the obesity rate?
(Coca-cola has little incentive, BTW, to propagate the notion that diet drinks don't help people lose weight. They've become very adept at selling the stuff.)
I'm not going to suggest the notion "Diet doesn't matter" is right, because I suspect it's a major factor, but I think it's simplistic to blame, for example, regular sugared Cola drinks for the increase.
I would say RFA completely invalidates your point. Governments did act relatively quickly and didn't try to shield the producers.
By comparison, the free-market+lawsuits route was used for asbestos, tobacco, and leaded gasoline. In all three cases, eventually the government had to step in, after decades of inaction and of legal routes going nowhere and making little or no difference.
If something is shown to be harmful, the government has a right to step in. We shouldn't have to wait for lawsuits - which can take decades, which address only specific issues, which can cost less to the manufacturers than ending the businesses that cause the problems, which can fail for reasons entirely unrelated to the harm causes to the victims - to somehow shut down the worst offenders.
That's great, but you're talking about Europe. The FCC doesn't give a crap what European GSM phones use, that's out of its jurisdiction. In the US, 900MHz is not used for GSM. 900MHz in the US is used for a variety of reasons, but there's a big fat ISM band in the middle there, and the FCC doesn't mind if you use it.
At one point a decade or so ago, most new US cordless phones used 900MHz.
I'm not sure how you'd "pretend" to be a terrorist, outside of a context where people know you're not (for example, acting in a movie.) You might pretend you support a cause you don't, but you're either causing fear in support of a political cause by threatening death or you're not.
If I tweet "The infidel Brits will soon know the error of their ways! On September 6th, stay away from the Empire Trade Tower if you want to live! #irishislamicrepublic" then (assuming Irish Islamic Republicanism is a real movement, and the Empire Trade Tower is a thing, the blowing up of which is considered serious) I'm obviously contributing a little to fear of, uh, IRIS/IRIL regardless of whether I'm doing it hunched over in a Internet Mosque Cafe in Londonderry fuming about Brits, or have just finished reading a 4chan thread and think it'd make great lulz.
Terrorism is terrorism. Death threats for a political cause are terrorism regardless of whether your intent is to go through with them.
No, it'd have the same name.
You can call lunchtime "527" in one country and the middle of the night "527" in another country, but that doesn't make them the same time.
Ah, so I had it all wrong, a Dyson sphere is actually a type of black hole that doesn't lose suction, not an energy collection device.
If Poettering uses the same communication methods as everyone else for managing his highly used open source project, then systemd is doing this because it can only get ahead without feedback.
If, OTOH, Poettering goes so far as to organize a public conference on his project, then his project is "doing too much".
Did you ever think, perhaps, that the conference is a way to get commentary and feedback on a project that's thus far been fairly controversial (largely for ridiculous reasons by people who think sysv init is a good idea?)
Well technically that's true but the products most mammals generate with methane are anything but...
Yeah, but Windows isn't free unless you're a member of their beta testing program. Windows 10 is a "free" upgrade, but that means you don't have to pay an additional fee for the update from your current version, not that you don't have to buy Windows to begin with.
I don't want any functionality that was present in Windows 7 to be ad-burdened in 10, even if it is just Freecell.
I think a better complaint would have been that this seems to be mostly a misrepresentation of what Microsoft is doing, not that "most people don't care" (so we shouldn't?)
When you try to cut into a steak from these new cows, it explodes and the entire restaurant then smells of methane.
From what I could see, the features that actually invade privacy are optional. The collage was highly misleading, including such things as "Windows Update being mandatory" and "Malware protection only being able to turn off temporarily" as "privacy violations" when they're actually both just things that suck.
Personally I rather liked the 8.1 way, which was kinda similar to how Android does things if you haven't set a preference yet - applications could cause a dialog to appear that showed them the available applications to do X and set one of them as the default.
I'd like Microsoft to change it back to that. Who knows, if we put enough pressure on them, rather than demand they stop beating their wives, they might do it.
There's nothing in the story implying that the show will be made in the US. Indeed, the quotes are from Amazon Prime's EU division.
I don't think so, browsers have always, until now, been able to set themselves as default, even back during the Netscape wars.
And they're not asserting ownership of your computer. What they've done is created a hamfisted (and biased towards Microsoft - yeah, I don't like it either) interface that replaces third parties modifying your computer with or without your consent. They had a better system in Windows 8.1, and should revert to that, but nonetheless, I don't actually like the idea of a browser being able to set itself up as default. I prefer myself to make that decision. Fortunately, the mainstream browsers have, until now, always at least asked for permission before changing the defaults, but that's not something they should have been allowed to do to begin with.
If we want this changed, we need to be a little less hyperbolic, because the issue here is that the new change isn't user friendly and is biased towards Microsoft, not ludicrous claims that Microsoft is taking control of your PC in some way it wasn't before. If you complain about the latter, expect your ticket to be closed with a "INVALID. Not actually a description of a real problem."
I don't think anything's changed about the degree to which IE or NewIE is part of the OS since Windows 7. What's changed is that browsers can't set themselves to be the default any more - the user has to do it explicitly in the system settings.
Personally, I thought the Windows 8.1 way of doing it was better. But I don't think this is as terrible a change as being suggested.
I bought my iPod long before the iTMS was announced. The thing succeeded because it was easy to use, manage, and it could store your entire music collection (well, most people's entire music collection.) There were other MP3 players with one or two of those features, but not all three. The iPod needed to be a success for Apple to be able to sell the iTMS (the concept that is), to the music industry.
Electric cars I suspect could have the same selling point (well, minus the storage of all music. On the other hand, I don't know, you could put a big SSD in each one I guess) - part of the point is that this tremendously complex confusing device should be a hell of a lot easier to maintain and - until self driving becomes standard - drive.
I'm guessing they mean something else by "memory protection", as a built in MMU is hardly unusual and I suspect has been part of SPARCs since the early days.
That appears to be a Slashdot exclusive, I can't see anything online about the Kim Dotcom and Mega parting ways.
That's a shame, I was hoping he was talking about tomacco. It's refreshingly addictive.
You know it's possible to be against both, right?
For example: the thread here is all about how big bad megacorps have been using sophistry to hide dangerous things on their labels.
And why did this come up? Because someone wanted a giant warning that a product may contain GMOs on every product this applies to.
That's a wacko position. Why is it wacko? Well, because it does nothing to help the problem they subsequently claim to want addressed, that labels are often misleading. It actually makes the label more misleading, by highlighting a non-essential fact, giving weight to it, and pretending it's something the buyer should be concerned about, while leaving the the manufacturers to continue to do whatever they want with the ingredient list.
GMOs that do not make significant changes to a product that would leave unusual chemicals in them are not dangerous. Their presence in a food product shouldn't be highlighted as something for a consumer to be concerned about. Doing so does not give the consumer more options, it confuses them and draws attention away from real health issues like sugars and potentially harmful fats.
Well, I think we are getting better at converting DC voltages, which is why HVDC is being used for transmission lines for example.
I suspect the reason is in part portable electronics. We're trying to eke out as much power as possible for multivoltage devices (one voltage for the processor, another for the screen, another for the HDD (portable electronics includes laptops too...) another for the USB bus, etc) from a single (DC it goes without saying) battery. The amount of R&D into the voltage conversion field over the last thirty years must have been extraordinary, yet not sexy enough to warrant much media coverage.
I'm pretty sure Firefox turned around and finished Firefox. *sigh*
Yes, those of us using CP/M on our VT102s can't just pipe everything through more "more" you insensitive clod!