Obama Obama Obama. Enough with this partisan nonsense
What's partisan about it? We complained about Bush and his lies. Why shouldn't we complain about Obama and his lies?
You don't get to call yourselves the land of the free when you're being monitored around the clock in case you might say or do something upsetting to your betters
Aren't you a bit schizophrenic? We are complaining about it and maybe this will change. People in most other nations aren't even doing that.
Where did I say anything about a "perfect free market"? In fact, I said:
Well, as long as the stay away from fascist or theocratic government and don't run out of toilet paper, the Brazilians should still be mostly OK.
When are people like you going to learn to read? And when are you going to stop seeing the world in black and white? I'm not the blind ideologue here, you are.
Actually, PT is centrist - the name only means that it has roots in "trabalhismo" (labour movement).
In what way? They are generally described as "center-left" or "social democratic", which makes them a left-wing party.
I'll just mention that a right-wing or a left-wing party in this circumstance would have the same kind of trouble, as long as it was so incompetent and dishonest as PT (PSDB, center-right, I'm looking at you).
Well, yes, it would have the same kind of trouble, as I said in my message: "if Brazil had a free market kind of government, some people would be protesting against that as well because they think they aren't getting their 'fair share'".
The question is: how do you avoid this kind of trouble? Any suggestions?
So while you sit safely at home smugly spinning lies to support your ideological war against the left,
So you say it's a "lie" that the protests started the way Reuters says they started? They didn't start because of bus ticket hikes? They aren't occurring among more educated groups, as opposed to among the poorest of the poor?
If you had done some proper research, you would have discovered that the "middle class" did not support the protest, it started off peacefully and only gained traction after abusive police crackdowns. [nydailynews.com]
Of course, the middle class doesn't like violent protests. It also doesn't like price hikes on government provided services. And it doesn't like higher taxes. You don't expect any kind of consistency in people's political choices, do you?
understand that there are real people with real issues who are bleeding and dying in the riots. At least respect that.
So maybe you can explain what those "real issues" are, because from the news reports, it looks like what I described. The fact that protests over public service fee hikes sometimes gets violent is not an explanation for the cause of these unrests in the first place.
Oh, and knock off the self-righteous indignation. No, you are not morally superior because you weave feigned compassion into your ideology.
That is, the protests are a noisy sign of discontent among a swath of the population that is on average richer and better educated than average Brazilians. A survey of demonstrators in Sao Paulo on Monday by polling firm Datafolha indicated they were three times more likely to have a university degree than the rest of the population.
Causes:
Just a quarter of demonstrators told Datafolha they were protesting against politicians - behind bus fares (56 percent), corruption (40 percent) and police repression (31 percent).
So, it's educated middle class people in the city protesting that politicians aren't giving them stuff cheaper and that politicians are wasting their money. Remember that Brazil is under a left-wing government headed by the PT (Worker's Party). At least it's not Venezuela, where the left wing government managed to produce a shortage of toilet paper; you really don't want to have riots involving large numbers of people lacking toilet paper; it's likely to be smelly.
Of course, if Brazil had a free market kind of government, some people would be protesting against that as well because they think they aren't getting their "fair share". They'd want a left wing government that gives them "free stuff", until that left wing government predictably fails to be able to deliver, and then they protest against that. Well, as long as the stay away from fascist or theocratic government and don't run out of toilet paper, the Brazilians should still be mostly OK.
Didn't you know? We must destroy democracy and civil liberties in order to save them. One life saved is worth all our civil liberties. Our voters expect no less (and sadly, they really don't).
The farmer cannot buy a pure glyphosphate, a pure surfactant, and the various other agents and mix his own blend in a corner of the cow barn.
Your view of agriculture is about a century out of date. Farms today are largely big agribusinesses receiving large government subsidies.
He can only do limited research on the various pre-mixed combination products that he can find on the Internet. And he has limited time to spend on this research: he has to be out working his fields. So Monsanto's large advertising budget can carry the day.
Do you think farmers are dummies? There are journals, trade magazines, reviews, and lots of other sources of information. And any farmer who can't figure out what the right product is for his needs will go out of business.
Farmers that hedge against possible drought by planting a portion of their acreage in a lower yield drought resistant corn while putting the rest in Roundup Ready corn can benefit from bulk discounts if they buy all their seed from Monsanto.
So you are saying that Monsanto is evil because they give bulk discounts? How is the farmer worse off than if Monsanto didn't exist at all or didn't give discounts?
I think the bigger part you're missing is the following. Either Monsanto's products work or they don't. Either there are generic products that work better for less money or there aren't. Farmers that make the right choice will stay in business, and farmers that don't will go out of business. That's what is supposed to happen. You still haven't explained what's so horrible about Monsanto.
Farmers choose to buy and plant Monsanto because they get the same or higher yields with less work; nobody forces them to do that. Furthermore, when they buy Monsanto's seed, they aren't "forbidden" to grow their own seed. Rather, patent law forbids them to do anything at all with Monsanto's seeds, but Monsanto gives them a license to do one thing (plant the seeds) but not do another thing (grow new seeds).
As far as I can tell, Monsanto is exactly doing what plant variety patents are intended to let them do: they develop new varieties, make 20 years of profits from them, and then the new varieties fall into the public domain. There isn't even anything GMO specific to that.
Also, let's not forget that these crops are mostly planted by big agribusinesses, and they aren't going to be tricked or pushed by Monsanto. If you want to get upset about something, get upset about the perverse amount of subsidies we give to the agribusinesses.
I would be interesting if Monsanto was also working on insects/plants that can defeat their products as they come off of patent protection...
If they did, it would be a criminal act and they would face enough liability to go out of business. It would also be against their own business interests because they are competitive even in a generic market, and their follow-on products also depend on glyphosate.
Of course nature is doing this already (for patent protected products), Roundup resistant weeds are spreading very quickly it appears
Well, that happens to a lot of new crops and pesticides. I don't see how that is an argument against Monsanto or GMO. Twenty years of having the option of using herbicide-resistant crops is still better than none at all.
I'm not saying that it's "acceptable"; I'm saying that "remember when we had a constitution", i.e., the implication that lawlessness has increased, is wrong. Our politicians and police are no more corrupt or lawless than they used to be. What actually has changed is that they can do more damage than they used to, and that people have started noticing and are complaining more. The former is cause for concern, the latter is cause for hope.
Monsanto has gained approval to market a drought resistant GMO corn. The only thing is, it is not any better than strains of drought resistant corn already on the market, developed at agricultural colleges to meet the specific conditions of various areas. The Monsanto GMO corn is not as good a solution as the strains that have been bred for each region.
So why would farmers buy it if it's not "as good a solution"? This isn't like the drug business where doctors are tricked into spending more of other people's money. 5% less yield means 5% less revenue to the person who selects the crop.
Monsanto's long term goal is to probably combine "Round Up Ready" GMO corn with GMO drought resistant corn and drive all other strains out of the market. That will ensure an increase in the flow of Round Up, which is one of Monsanto's biggest revenue streams. (What Round Up can do to a trout streams is something else again.)
Glyphosate is generic, so people can buy it from other companies. And farmers were using glyphosate (and other herbicides) long before GMO. If anything, they need to use less now to produce the same amount of food.
There has been a noticeable increase in Bt resistant pests in areas where Monsanto GM Bt crops have been grown. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that not much research on this "aberration" is being funded.
Pests will develop resistance to almost any pest control measure over time. That doesn't mean that everybody suddenly becomes an organic farmer, it means that we keep developing new pest control measures. That's no different from the constant arms race that any competing species in nature engage in, whether it's gazelle and lion or bt and bollworm.
Aren't you the little Monsanto fanboi. But your post does provide a convenient place to air some of the other problems that are associated with Monsanto's exploitive business practices.
So far, your objections are pointless. And "Roundup Ready" crops are going into the public domain starting next year. So at that point, you can forget all that Monsanto bashing, because then choosing those crops is really no different from choosing any other crop, GMO or not GMO. Who are you going to blame then for farmers choosing generic "Roundup Ready" crops?
Those "highly favorable traits" are resistance to the herbicides that Monsanto also sells. For every USA acre sown with their GMO corn they can be sure of selling an appropriate amount of Round Up to treat that acreage at least a couple of times.
Glyphosate (Roundup) has long become generic, and many companies sell it.
Of course the ecosystem does not have the genes to protect itself from Round Up.
Farmers have used herbicides since long before herbicide resistant crops. Roundup-Ready crops mean that farmers can get by with a single appiication and space their crops more closely. If anything, that reduces exposure of "the ecosystem" to herbicides that "it does not have the genes to protect itself from". So how is this worse?
The real problem is "close source food chain" vs. "open source food chain". That is why GM food - Monsanto style - is bad. Really bad. Unfortunately the anti-GM movement has taken a different path of protesting against the science, rather than this very basic fact.
Patents last about 20 years. Monsanto's patents on the first generation of GM food are expiring next year. That means that everybody will be able to use those seeds freely, and if they are any good, benefit from them (each farmer can decide that for themselves). It also means that Monsanto has had to innovate to come up with the next generation of GMO seeds, which have significantly improved yields. Those too will be in the public domain probably 15 years from now. And the cycle repeats.
When it comes to biotech and drugs, the patent system is largely doing what it is supposed to: creating innovations that then fall into the public domain after a while. And the situation is not comparable to closed source because patents expire after 20 years. For software, it's nominally about a century for corporate copyrights, but in practice, that can be extended almost indefinitely; also, the innovation cycle for software is shorter, making the problem even worse. So your analogy doesn't hold.
Monsanto's products aren't copyrighted, they are patented. Those patents expire after 20 years. Roundup-Ready is becoming generic next year, at which point you can use it freely (since Roundup has also become generic). And Monsanto has to innovate in order to compete with its own generic product.
What has made Microsoft so dangerous and threatened to monopolize the industry was the unreasonably long duration of copyrights. And as you may notice, Microsoft Windows is fading from significance as well.
Also, lobby for legislation which requires food aid from the US to be GMO crops and any seed giving to developing nations through US aid to be their property, so they can come knockin' later when that country's farmers prosper a bit and the native seed banks are all but extinct."
The lobbying isn't much of a problem. Kids ask their parents for ponies by the millions every Christmas. The real problem is that our corrupt legislators grant these wishes, mostly because it's not their own money that they are giving away. You can't stop greedy industry from asking for feeding at the governmental trough; the only people who can stop the feeding is the legislators who actually hand out the money.
The solution is simple: vote for people who staunchly oppose agricultural subsidies, food aid, international "aid", and overzealous EPA monitoring. If they turn out to have completely lied about their positions once they get into office, vote them out of office and select the next candidate. That's the only way to "change the system". Whining and complaining about "big bad corporations and their lobbyists" as people do isn't going to accomplish anything other than diffuse responsibility away from the people who actually are at fault: our legislators and the voters who put them in Congress.
Yeah, C# is a much better language. Too bad it got killed on FOSS platforms by FUD from Java activists, and ironic that it turned out to be Java that was full of legal traps and bad faith claims of openness.
Let's not be overly nostalgic here: government in the past was quite busy violating the constitution in many ways, often far worse than recent administrations (and both Bush and Obama really are near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to presidents). However, they had less technology to do so effectively; that is, most people could simply ignore whatever stupidity or corruption Washington was cooking up.
He's rightly concerned that he will be extradited to the USA and be subjected to indefinite detention as a "terrorist"
And why is he afraid of that? If the US indicts and extradites him, what's going to happen in the US? He (a) receives a fair trial and is set free, (b) receives a fair trial and is convicted, (c) receives an unfair trial and is convicted, or (d) is detained indefinitely. It seems to me that (b)-(d) are all excellent ways of bringing about political change, with (d) being very unlikely. I think what Assange really is afraid of is that the US does nothing, or that he gets a trial and is not convicted. Those seem like the most likely outcomes to me. And he is afraid of that because he simply can't square it with his view of the US as the great devil.
Effective civil disobedience and making change happen requires facing the justice system and paying the price; it is much less effective and convincing if you don't. But Assange doesn't seem interested in effecting positive change, he simply hates.
The part against unreasonable search and seizure. Your neighbor may fly above your home and take pictures, the government is not allowed to. See, according to our Constitution, the government should have fewer rights than citizens. In fact, the federal government should only have those rights enumerated and specifically granted to it, and I'm pretty sure that flying over my backyard and taking pictures isn't among those.
Oh no, our government is saving time and money! Stop them! I get your complaint, but that is literally what technology is for.
Except they aren't "saving time and money", they are keep spending the same (or more money) and doing more and more surveillance.
Given that computers, drones, and other technologies etc. have greatly reduced the cost of policing, tax collecting, spying, etc. we should greatly reduce the budgets of these agencies.
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What's partisan about it? We complained about Bush and his lies. Why shouldn't we complain about Obama and his lies?
Aren't you a bit schizophrenic? We are complaining about it and maybe this will change. People in most other nations aren't even doing that.
Where did I say anything about a "perfect free market"? In fact, I said:
When are people like you going to learn to read? And when are you going to stop seeing the world in black and white? I'm not the blind ideologue here, you are.
In what way? They are generally described as "center-left" or "social democratic", which makes them a left-wing party.
Well, yes, it would have the same kind of trouble, as I said in my message: "if Brazil had a free market kind of government, some people would be protesting against that as well because they think they aren't getting their 'fair share'".
The question is: how do you avoid this kind of trouble? Any suggestions?
So you say it's a "lie" that the protests started the way Reuters says they started? They didn't start because of bus ticket hikes? They aren't occurring among more educated groups, as opposed to among the poorest of the poor?
Of course, the middle class doesn't like violent protests. It also doesn't like price hikes on government provided services. And it doesn't like higher taxes. You don't expect any kind of consistency in people's political choices, do you?
So maybe you can explain what those "real issues" are, because from the news reports, it looks like what I described. The fact that protests over public service fee hikes sometimes gets violent is not an explanation for the cause of these unrests in the first place.
Oh, and knock off the self-righteous indignation. No, you are not morally superior because you weave feigned compassion into your ideology.
Silly question: do you actually have a better explanation of what is going on, or do you just jump on anybody who mentions the words "left wing"?
I think the causes and the protesters are interesting:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-brazil-protests-impact-analysis-idUSBRE95I1LQ20130619
Causes:
So, it's educated middle class people in the city protesting that politicians aren't giving them stuff cheaper and that politicians are wasting their money. Remember that Brazil is under a left-wing government headed by the PT (Worker's Party). At least it's not Venezuela, where the left wing government managed to produce a shortage of toilet paper; you really don't want to have riots involving large numbers of people lacking toilet paper; it's likely to be smelly.
Of course, if Brazil had a free market kind of government, some people would be protesting against that as well because they think they aren't getting their "fair share". They'd want a left wing government that gives them "free stuff", until that left wing government predictably fails to be able to deliver, and then they protest against that. Well, as long as the stay away from fascist or theocratic government and don't run out of toilet paper, the Brazilians should still be mostly OK.
Didn't you know? We must destroy democracy and civil liberties in order to save them. One life saved is worth all our civil liberties. Our voters expect no less (and sadly, they really don't).
Your view of agriculture is about a century out of date. Farms today are largely big agribusinesses receiving large government subsidies.
Do you think farmers are dummies? There are journals, trade magazines, reviews, and lots of other sources of information. And any farmer who can't figure out what the right product is for his needs will go out of business.
So you are saying that Monsanto is evil because they give bulk discounts? How is the farmer worse off than if Monsanto didn't exist at all or didn't give discounts?
I think the bigger part you're missing is the following. Either Monsanto's products work or they don't. Either there are generic products that work better for less money or there aren't. Farmers that make the right choice will stay in business, and farmers that don't will go out of business. That's what is supposed to happen. You still haven't explained what's so horrible about Monsanto.
This isn't about TigerMax doing anything; it's about an employee of TigerMax cheating his employer.
Farmers choose to buy and plant Monsanto because they get the same or higher yields with less work; nobody forces them to do that. Furthermore, when they buy Monsanto's seed, they aren't "forbidden" to grow their own seed. Rather, patent law forbids them to do anything at all with Monsanto's seeds, but Monsanto gives them a license to do one thing (plant the seeds) but not do another thing (grow new seeds).
As far as I can tell, Monsanto is exactly doing what plant variety patents are intended to let them do: they develop new varieties, make 20 years of profits from them, and then the new varieties fall into the public domain. There isn't even anything GMO specific to that.
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/roundup-ready-patent-expiration.aspx
Also, let's not forget that these crops are mostly planted by big agribusinesses, and they aren't going to be tricked or pushed by Monsanto. If you want to get upset about something, get upset about the perverse amount of subsidies we give to the agribusinesses.
If they did, it would be a criminal act and they would face enough liability to go out of business. It would also be against their own business interests because they are competitive even in a generic market, and their follow-on products also depend on glyphosate.
Well, that happens to a lot of new crops and pesticides. I don't see how that is an argument against Monsanto or GMO. Twenty years of having the option of using herbicide-resistant crops is still better than none at all.
I'm not saying that it's "acceptable"; I'm saying that "remember when we had a constitution", i.e., the implication that lawlessness has increased, is wrong. Our politicians and police are no more corrupt or lawless than they used to be. What actually has changed is that they can do more damage than they used to, and that people have started noticing and are complaining more. The former is cause for concern, the latter is cause for hope.
I suggest reading Brin's critique of the Star Wars universe. Robo-racism is just a symptom of a much deeper problem:
http://www.davidbrin.com/starwarsontrial.html
So why would farmers buy it if it's not "as good a solution"? This isn't like the drug business where doctors are tricked into spending more of other people's money. 5% less yield means 5% less revenue to the person who selects the crop.
Glyphosate is generic, so people can buy it from other companies. And farmers were using glyphosate (and other herbicides) long before GMO. If anything, they need to use less now to produce the same amount of food.
Pests will develop resistance to almost any pest control measure over time. That doesn't mean that everybody suddenly becomes an organic farmer, it means that we keep developing new pest control measures. That's no different from the constant arms race that any competing species in nature engage in, whether it's gazelle and lion or bt and bollworm.
So far, your objections are pointless. And "Roundup Ready" crops are going into the public domain starting next year. So at that point, you can forget all that Monsanto bashing, because then choosing those crops is really no different from choosing any other crop, GMO or not GMO. Who are you going to blame then for farmers choosing generic "Roundup Ready" crops?
Glyphosate (Roundup) has long become generic, and many companies sell it.
Farmers have used herbicides since long before herbicide resistant crops. Roundup-Ready crops mean that farmers can get by with a single appiication and space their crops more closely. If anything, that reduces exposure of "the ecosystem" to herbicides that "it does not have the genes to protect itself from". So how is this worse?
Patents last about 20 years. Monsanto's patents on the first generation of GM food are expiring next year. That means that everybody will be able to use those seeds freely, and if they are any good, benefit from them (each farmer can decide that for themselves). It also means that Monsanto has had to innovate to come up with the next generation of GMO seeds, which have significantly improved yields. Those too will be in the public domain probably 15 years from now. And the cycle repeats.
When it comes to biotech and drugs, the patent system is largely doing what it is supposed to: creating innovations that then fall into the public domain after a while. And the situation is not comparable to closed source because patents expire after 20 years. For software, it's nominally about a century for corporate copyrights, but in practice, that can be extended almost indefinitely; also, the innovation cycle for software is shorter, making the problem even worse. So your analogy doesn't hold.
Monsanto's products aren't copyrighted, they are patented. Those patents expire after 20 years. Roundup-Ready is becoming generic next year, at which point you can use it freely (since Roundup has also become generic). And Monsanto has to innovate in order to compete with its own generic product.
What has made Microsoft so dangerous and threatened to monopolize the industry was the unreasonably long duration of copyrights. And as you may notice, Microsoft Windows is fading from significance as well.
The lobbying isn't much of a problem. Kids ask their parents for ponies by the millions every Christmas. The real problem is that our corrupt legislators grant these wishes, mostly because it's not their own money that they are giving away. You can't stop greedy industry from asking for feeding at the governmental trough; the only people who can stop the feeding is the legislators who actually hand out the money.
The solution is simple: vote for people who staunchly oppose agricultural subsidies, food aid, international "aid", and overzealous EPA monitoring. If they turn out to have completely lied about their positions once they get into office, vote them out of office and select the next candidate. That's the only way to "change the system". Whining and complaining about "big bad corporations and their lobbyists" as people do isn't going to accomplish anything other than diffuse responsibility away from the people who actually are at fault: our legislators and the voters who put them in Congress.
Also forgot operator overloading.
Yeah, C# is a much better language. Too bad it got killed on FOSS platforms by FUD from Java activists, and ironic that it turned out to be Java that was full of legal traps and bad faith claims of openness.
There's more missing in Java:
multidimensional arrays
unsafe modules
easy interfaces to native code
Java also has some serious design errors, like its array types, its parameterized types, its exception system, and its strings.
Let's not be overly nostalgic here: government in the past was quite busy violating the constitution in many ways, often far worse than recent administrations (and both Bush and Obama really are near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to presidents). However, they had less technology to do so effectively; that is, most people could simply ignore whatever stupidity or corruption Washington was cooking up.
How do you know?
And why is he afraid of that? If the US indicts and extradites him, what's going to happen in the US? He (a) receives a fair trial and is set free, (b) receives a fair trial and is convicted, (c) receives an unfair trial and is convicted, or (d) is detained indefinitely. It seems to me that (b)-(d) are all excellent ways of bringing about political change, with (d) being very unlikely. I think what Assange really is afraid of is that the US does nothing, or that he gets a trial and is not convicted. Those seem like the most likely outcomes to me. And he is afraid of that because he simply can't square it with his view of the US as the great devil.
Effective civil disobedience and making change happen requires facing the justice system and paying the price; it is much less effective and convincing if you don't. But Assange doesn't seem interested in effecting positive change, he simply hates.
The part against unreasonable search and seizure. Your neighbor may fly above your home and take pictures, the government is not allowed to. See, according to our Constitution, the government should have fewer rights than citizens. In fact, the federal government should only have those rights enumerated and specifically granted to it, and I'm pretty sure that flying over my backyard and taking pictures isn't among those.
And a little later that's followed by "that's old news and there is no need to talk about it anymore".
Except they aren't "saving time and money", they are keep spending the same (or more money) and doing more and more surveillance.
Given that computers, drones, and other technologies etc. have greatly reduced the cost of policing, tax collecting, spying, etc. we should greatly reduce the budgets of these agencies.