"An experienced pit boss knows the difference between someone who is card counting and someone who isn't."
He does this by noting how much the player looses or wins. Personally, I find it sickening that the casinos are even permitted to remove a player from the table just because they're not making/loosing money. If they don't like the way people play then they should resort to casino games where a player can't tell the odds which means they have to get rid of all the traditional card games...
... it will detect radiation. When you walk into the woods with a very sensitive geiger counter;-) it will detect even more radiation. Radiation is everywhere, but what's that got to do with RFID?
1. Cisco will step up support of IPv6 the more of it|s customers adopt it.
2. A long time ago somebody said 640K of ram is enough.
3. Not true. Just because the network addresses themselves doubled in size (8 bytes) that still doesn\t mean routing tables will bloat, explode and spiral out of control. The size of a routing table is determined more by how many subnets there are than how large the entry in that table is. They\ll just double in size and we can certainly handle that.
4. I can live with a performance hit of 3.4% . I|m not going to do your math but you claim it's 3.4% at 576 bytes... Pray tell me how much is it at 1536 bytes? 1.3%? How much is it at 2048 bytes? less than\ 1%...
Mono is as many trillion miles away from dotNet as dotNet is trillions of lightyears away from java. Ximian would need a warp drive to catch up to Microsoft and Microsoft would need a wormhole to catch up to the Java2 Platform.
manufacturers who are interested in running Windows Media Technology on Linux-based consumer devices such as set-top boxes, personal video recorders, and other hybrid multimedia devices.
That strikes me as kind of stupid... I mean 'manufacturers who wanted to run WMT on a linux consumer device' would need 'consumers who want to use WMT on a linux consumer device'... Who in his right mind would want content locked into WMT?!?! Who in his right mind would nowadays even want to do business with Microsoft for that matter now that we have vorbis and other codecs that really rock instead of the costly but inferior crap Microsoft tries to peddle... b
Corrections. It's already booming and the sky's the limit for those that manage to stay on the outside of a 700V lethal electric fence! You could be the manager of an inmate labor program, or you could go for career with the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice as a certified Execution Technician. And what's best your skills as a IT professional are still needed... CAS (Computer Aided Sentencing), IT-Systems (Inmate Termination Systems (what did you think?)), handheld DTT (Dissident Tracking & Termination) applications.... no rest for the wicked!
Why not generate a OTP, encrypt the message with it and then send both the OTP and the OTP-encrypted message encrypted with a conventional symmetric cipher? Makes known-plaintext attacks a little more difficult.
You know, Turd, back when Microsoft had these roadshows where they wanted to show off some New Old Technology and when there was still DEC around? I went to one of these events and I told the people from Digital that I don't give a shit about Windows NT and I wanted to see OpenVMS for Alpha... They laughed, took me to a back room and we spent hours playing with a spanking new Alpha with OpenVMS on it.
... and I'm already beginning to feel that tingling sensation I get in my fingers and on my scalp when I'm about to loose my temper in a big way. It's funny how my hearing fades away when I'm really angry and I can only hear the blood rushing through my ears... My conscious mind has likewise blotted out most of that excruciatingly painful experience of trying to fix some extremely incapable butthole's code on Microsoft NT. I guess this is probably related to the postwar-stress symptoms some soldiers had after returning from Vietnam. Anyway... my psychiatrist says that by forgetting all about it the conscious mind tries to protect itself because if it didn't blot out all that literally mind-blowing pain my mind just couldn't go on functioning. Anyway... just forgetting about it works for me, but sometimes I get sudden flashbacks of stepping through the MFC code and the fantasies I have about torturing the Microborgs who wrote this piece of crap to death with red hot iron pokers and electrical stunners (they'd put me away if I really told you what I would love to do to them). That was in my rookie years, now you will excuse me I think I have a major flashback coming on and need to be alone...
You're must obviously shilling for Monsanto, El Christador. First of all, you're userid 302969 (I'm 324741 and I have had this account for two years now), but your posting history has only two messages in it in all, both posted on the same day and in this thread. (Verify this by clicking on his userid number).
El Christador has posted 2 comments.
1 Re:They just trespassed on the fields or sprayed t posted on Friday August 02, @11:21AM (Score:1) attached to Starving Nation Turns Down Bioengineered Corn 2 Re:Canadian Farmer ordered to pay for GE crops. posted on Friday August 02, @11:12AM (Score:1) attached to Starving Nation Turns Down Bioengineered Corn
second of all, surprise, surprise I went through the trouble of reading the ruling and it's plain obvious that you're lying through your teeth. It may be a little tedious to read through all this so feel free to skip to the middle or the end. Just remember, it gets juicier and juicier near the end.
"[8] The plaintiffs' claim alleges that in 1998 the defendants planted glyphosate-resistant seeds to grow a crop of canola, for harvest, having a gene or cell that is the subject of the plaintiffs' patent."
The plaintiff alleges, in other words, the plaintiff claims that this is what happened. Nowhere in that court ruling is there any information whatsoever to be found on how exactly the Monsanto product got onto Mr. Schmeiser's property, i.e. whether Mr. Schmeiser intentionally obtained it by any means, or whether the contamination to his crop was transmitted by pollen, the latter being the more likely of the two.
"[11]The defendants do not deny the presence of Roundup Ready canola in their fields in 1998, but they urged at trial that neither Mr. Schmeiser nor Schmeiser Enterprises Ltd. have ever deliberately planted, or caused to be planted, any seeds licensed by the plaintiffs containing the patented gene. The defendants further asserted that substantial damage and loss has been suffered by them because of the herbicide-resistant plants. It is said for them that it is not possible to control the growth of the Roundup Ready canola with normal herbicides, it interferes with crop selection, making it difficult to plant anything other than canola, and it requires the adoption of new farming practices."
Obviously there is a new angle to the consequences of exposure to Monsanto products. Not only does it adulterate a farmer's existing seed stock, but as some seeds always remain on the field after harvest, that field can not easily be used to grow a different kind of crop as the Monsanto product is tenacious enough to evade other herbicides targetted at the former crop (= crop selection). As such, Monsanto has caused Mr. Schmeiser damage and not the other way around, and clearly shows the audacity of Monsanto to sue in the first place.
"12] The defendants urged at trial that by the unconfined release of the gene into the environment the plaintiffs have not controlled its spread, and did not intend to do so, and they have thus lost or waived their right to exercise an exclusive patent over the gene. [13] The defendants further asserted at trial that Canadian Patent No. 1,313,830 is, and always has been, invalid and void because: (a) the alleged invention is a life form intended for human consumption and is not the proper subject matter for a patent; it is self-propagating and can spread without human intervention;"
Let's put this into perspective for slashdot readers who are aware of Digital Rights Management issues: Monsanto's actions are tantamount to an ISV spreading their software using an internet worm or virus and extorting license fees from each and every infected site. Since Monsanto did not deactivate the plants ability to reproduce, and since Monsanto does have the ability to disable the reproduction process of plants (re Monsanto's controversial "Terminator" technology) they neglected to take appropiate steps to control the distribution of their product. After all, a company that is capable of manipulating such fundamental processes in a plant should very well be aware of the plants natural reproductive processes and the ramifications of that, such as the uncontrolled spread of their genetic manipulation by natural means such as pollination. Apparently sueing unintended recipients of an by its very nature extremely uncontrollable biological agent is Monsanto's idea of protecting its patents, and it is saddening to see that court accepting this notion.
The court ruling then lengthily expounds on what the Monsanto patents are exactly... so let's skip to:
"[25] Moreover, in my opinion, the construction of the patent, in relation to the claims in issue, is not contested except in relation to the claim for infringement. There the scope of the patent is in issue by the defence that since the defendants did not spray their 1998 crop of canola with Roundup herbicide, after it had emerged, they did not use the plaintiffs' invention."
Obviously if Schmeiser had intentionally infected his fields with Monsanto product he would have used their matching "Roundup" pesticide. Interesting, isn't it?
Now let's move on to the mystery of how exactly Mr. Schmeiser's seed-stock may have gotten corrupted:
"[34] I note that in 1996 one of the licensed farmers, Mr. Huber, a neighbour of Mr. Schmeiser, grew seed under license from Monsanto on a quarter section just north and west of, and diagonally adjacent to, Mr. Schmeiser's field No. 6. It was the evidence at trial of Mr. Schmeiser's hired man, Carlysle Moritz, that at the end of the 1996 crop year, a substantial swath of canola had blown from Mr. Huber's land onto field No. 6. There was no evidence that seed from Schmeiser's field No. 6 was saved in 1996 to be used as seed for his 1997 crop."
So what do we have here? A "licensed" Monsanto crop in the immediate vicinity of Mr. Schmeisers property as well as the admission that there is no evidence that any of the Monsanto product was intentionally saved for planting in the following year.
The ruling then laboriously recounts on how the crop samples were obtained, largely the testimony of the investigating firm's staff which obviously has a direct economic interest in Monsanto's case succeeding.
After that follows a brief recapitulation of the evidence in the case, the attempts of the defense to make the evidence inadmissible on the grounds that it was fraudulently obtained and that the integrity of both the process of gathering the evidence as well as the testimonies of individuals testifying on behalf of the plaintiff are highly questionable to the question of the validity of the patents itself. That last section in of itself is very interesting, to say the least. Anybody who tries to follow the courts reasoning will find that it does not reflect much on the natural processes which preclude Monsanto from owning such a patent, but on legal technicalities. (But then the very fabric of law is spun from legal technicalities isn't it?). This goes on for quiete a while until we get to the juicy part, the reasoning behind the ruling itself:
"[92] Thus a farmer whose field contains seed or plants originating from seed spilled into them, or blown as seed, in swaths from a neighbour's land or even growing from germination by pollen carried into his field from elsewhere by insects, birds, or by the wind, may own the seed or plants on his land even if he did not set about to plant them. He does not, however, own the right to the use of the patented gene, or of the seed or plant containing the patented gene or cell."
It's apparently that easy in Canada. You're the owner of whatever pleases itself to be blown onto your fields but if it so happens that someone owns the a patent on it, you owe them money!
"[94]Here the defendants urge that having introduced its invention for unconfined release into the environment without control over its dispersion, the plaintiffs, as inventor and licensee have lost any claim to enforcement of their rights to exclusive use. It is said for the defendants that Monsanto obtained regulatory approval for the "unconfined release" into the environment of the patented gene pursuant to the Seeds Regulations, C.R.C. c. 1400. Whether that is so is not significant in my view."
What is significant then, Your Honor? What gives Monsanto the ability to hold on to their patent after blatantly releasing their patented genes into the wild without any way to control their dispersion?
The answer to this is given by recounting the various precaution Monsanto takes to cash in on its patents, the most important apparently being random audits by investigative firms to make sure everybody pays up that has Monsanto product on their fields. In other words, I throw something in your mailbox you never wanted, I send a detective to your house and if he finds that in your mailbox I can send you a bill and sue you silly if you don't pay up. In regards to farming this means YOU have the responsibility to make sure there is no Monsanto product in your crop. YOU have to go through all that crop and weed out something which by it's very design has been made difficult to weed out. Good luck, I say.
"Indeed the weight of evidence in this case supports the conclusion that the plaintiffs undertook a variety of measures designed to control the unwanted spread of canola containing their patented gene and cell."
I don't think I have to comment on this much, it is so painfully obvious that we're dealing with a Kangaroo court here: Again, it is enough to simply send a bill to whoever has the misfortune of receiving something they've never wanted nor asked for and which is even causing them a lot of pain.
Without further ado we skip the exact details on how exactly the defendant unknowingly infringed on the patent and come to the ruling itself:
"[130] While discretion to grant an injunction restraining further use or sale of the subject matter of the patent is expressly vested in the Court under s. 57 of the Act, the defendants here submit such relief, if it be to restrain the growing of Roundup Ready canola, would be impossible to comply with in light of the uncontrollable spread of the patented gene."
What Your Honor is saying here is "I know it's impossible to avoid having inadvertently your fields contaminated with Monsanto's product..." but a paragraph later he sentences Schmeiser to stop using his 1997-1998 stock of seed, handing that stock of seed over to Monsanto and paying $105,000 of damages to Monsanto.
A couple of paragraphs later it really gets interesting again when the judge goes on with:
"Exemplary damages
[141]The plaintiffs also claim exemplary damages. In my opinion this is not a case for exemplary damages. Neither the corporate defendant nor Mr. Schmeiser acted in a manner that would warrant punishment or that would deserve condemnation by the Court. Only conduct of that order would warrant exemplary damages. (Lubrizol Corp. v. Imperial Oil Ltd. (1996), 67 C.P.R. (3d) 1 at 18 (F.C.A.))."
Yes! Your Honor is saying, "Yes Mr. Schmeiser, it's not your fault, you did nothing wrong and I'm not holding anything against you but you will have to pay up anyway..."
Didn't think someone would actually read it, did you?
I am in the position to influence purchase decisions and I will be extremely biased against HP for a very long time to come. Their behavior as "corporate citizens" does have an massive impact on how I view them to be dependable suppliers, and a company whose VP does something as (legally) inane as trotting out the "DMCA" to protect the reputation of their obviously flawed product... I suppose I need to explain no further.
Percy Schmeiser did buy and use Monsanto chemicals at one time or other, but he never voluntarily nor knowingly contaminated his field with Monsanto seeds:
Quote: 'In my case, I never had anything to do with Monsanto, outside of buying chemicals. I never signed a contract. If I would go to St. Louis and contaminate their plots--destroy what they have worked on for 40 years--I think I would be put in jail and the key thrown away.'
Percy Schmeiser, June 19, 2000
I wonder who educated you, Citizen:-) Whoever did that, obviously did a thorough job. They're not "slightly more immune" to corporate pressure in Europe, they're just "slightly more finicky" about what goes over the wire and into the newspapers.
They've got a reason to be worried about importing genetically engineered crops into Zimbabwe, especially if it's seed from Monsanto. There is a story on Guerilla News Network about a Canadian farmer whose crop was infected with Monsanto engineered crop he never wanted and still was made to pay:
"
(GNN) In a Kafkaesque ruling sure to send a chill up the spines of farmers around the world, a Canadian farmer has been ordered to pay thousands of dollars to Monsanto for violating their patent on genetically modified canola seed. The twist: the farmer, Percy Schmeiser, says he is accused of stealing something he never wanted in the first place. Schmeiser's fields were contaminated when pollen from genetically engineered seeds blew onto his then GE-free land from neighboring farms. Shortly after, Monsanto's "gene police" invaded his farm, took seed samples without his permission, and then charged him with violating Canadian patent law that says it's illegal for farmers to re-use or to grow Monsanto's GM seed without signing a licensing agreement. Even though it was Schmeiser whose fields were polluted with organisms he never wanted, the court says he must now pay Monsanto $10,000 for licensing fees and up to $75,000 in profits from his 1998 crop."
You can read the rest of the article here.
For more in-depth information go to Percy Schmeiser's website.I especially like the part where they fly over farmers' fields and dump chemicals on them without knowledge or permission of the farmer to "prove" the farmers were using their seeds.
The IMEI number is also ESSENTIAL for tracking. Were there no IMEI, or could people change their IMEI at will, a criminal (you, me, anybody who needs to be tracked for some reason) could just change the SIM on the phone. With hundreds of different kinds of pre-paid SIMs out there, some of which don't even require ID at the point of sale, how would it be possible to track anyone and/or monitor their phone calls?
Sorry to hear that you're no longer interested in the 64-bit market segment. I can't really blame you, I suppose you're better off selling medical equipment like heart monitors. Too bad that you made it quiet clear that you have no intentions of ever coming back, or else you wouldn't have taken a shit right in our faces before you left.
You're playing the devil's advocate here, aren't you? I can do that too (and probably be a lot more honest in the process): How about "We need to put in extensive monitoring into rental cars so we can be compliant with the "Patriot" act"?:-)
This could be the Mihira system... (Sanskrit), or did you forget about the persian sun-god Mithra, they worshipped in Rome around 300 BCE? Or... since we're already on the subject of sun-gods, maybe it's the Ravi system... (Sanskrit, too), or did you forget all about Ra, the Egyptian sun-god?
Or maybe it's even the 'Shawna' system, the Persian word for sun, the word which points us in the direction of Jonas, the biblical character that got swallowed by a whale (like the sun gets swallowed in the evening by the horizon).
You know, there was civilization long before people came up with Latin and ancient Greek, and they didn't call that world Terra or Erde or Earth either..., so don't complain that some call Sol Sun, trust me there are a bunch of other words for that star such as the gaelic 'Grian' which incidentally is derived from another Sanskrit word for light and warmth (I believe Khris) from which of course we derive the name 'Christ' from. They never really stopped worshipping the sun in Rome and I doubt we'll ever stop with coming up with new names for it.
Slashdot Mirror
"An experienced pit boss knows the difference between someone who is card counting and someone who isn't." He does this by noting how much the player looses or wins. Personally, I find it sickening that the casinos are even permitted to remove a player from the table just because they're not making/loosing money. If they don't like the way people play then they should resort to casino games where a player can't tell the odds which means they have to get rid of all the traditional card games...
Why should I make stupid bets at the table when I know better?!?!
... it will detect radiation. When you walk into the woods with a very sensitive geiger counter ;-) it will detect even more radiation. Radiation is everywhere, but what's that got to do with RFID?
1. Cisco will step up support of IPv6 the more of it|s customers adopt it.
...
2. A long time ago somebody said 640K of ram is enough.
3. Not true. Just because the network addresses themselves doubled in size (8 bytes) that still doesn\t mean routing tables will bloat, explode and spiral out of control. The size of a routing table is determined more by how many subnets there are than how large the entry in that table is. They\ll just double in size and we can certainly handle that.
4. I can live with a performance hit of 3.4% . I|m not going to do your math but you claim it's 3.4% at 576 bytes... Pray tell me how much is it at 1536 bytes? 1.3%? How much is it at 2048 bytes? less than\ 1%
Mono is as many trillion miles away from dotNet as dotNet is trillions of lightyears away from java. Ximian would need a warp drive to catch up to Microsoft and Microsoft would need a wormhole to catch up to the Java2 Platform.
Maybe to avoid companies like scumsoft?
manufacturers who are interested in running Windows Media Technology on Linux-based consumer devices such as set-top boxes, personal video recorders, and other hybrid multimedia devices.
That strikes me as kind of stupid... I mean 'manufacturers who wanted to run WMT on a linux consumer device' would need 'consumers who want to use WMT on a linux consumer device'... Who in his right mind would want content locked into WMT?!?! Who in his right mind would nowadays even want to do business with Microsoft for that matter now that we have vorbis and other codecs that really rock instead of the costly but inferior crap Microsoft tries to peddle... b
Taco,
This year's april joke was lame the first time around.
Corrections. It's already booming and the sky's the limit for those that manage to stay on the outside of a 700V lethal electric fence! You could be the manager of an inmate labor program, or you could go for career with the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice as a certified Execution Technician. And what's best your skills as a IT professional are still needed... CAS (Computer Aided Sentencing), IT-Systems (Inmate Termination Systems (what did you think?)), handheld DTT (Dissident Tracking & Termination) applications.... no rest for the wicked!
Doesn't a privilege escalation feature in the Linux kernel somehow violate Microsoft intellectual property rights?
Why not generate a OTP, encrypt the message with it and then send both the OTP and the OTP-encrypted message encrypted with a conventional symmetric cipher? Makes known-plaintext attacks a little more difficult.
So...? How appealing is forking over $4000/year to MS for a code signing certificate to a shareware author?
You know, Turd, back when Microsoft had these roadshows where they wanted to show off some New Old Technology and when there was still DEC around? I went to one of these events and I told the people from Digital that I don't give a shit about Windows NT and I wanted to see OpenVMS for Alpha... They laughed, took me to a back room and we spent hours playing with a spanking new Alpha with OpenVMS on it.
According to Nancy Cummings, the official Emissary of the Zeta Reticulans... we are due for the pole shift. You can read all about it on Zetatalk.com
I don't believe in it all that much, but the weather and our government has been acting pretty strange recently, hasn't it?
... and I'm already beginning to feel that tingling sensation I get in my fingers and on my scalp when I'm about to loose my temper in a big way. It's funny how my hearing fades away when I'm really angry and I can only hear the blood rushing through my ears... My conscious mind has likewise blotted out most of that excruciatingly painful experience of trying to fix some extremely incapable butthole's code on Microsoft NT. I guess this is probably related to the postwar-stress symptoms some soldiers had after returning from Vietnam. Anyway... my psychiatrist says that by forgetting all about it the conscious mind tries to protect itself because if it didn't blot out all that literally mind-blowing pain my mind just couldn't go on functioning. Anyway... just forgetting about it works for me, but sometimes I get sudden flashbacks of stepping through the MFC code and the fantasies I have about torturing the Microborgs who wrote this piece of crap to death with red hot iron pokers and electrical stunners (they'd put me away if I really told you what I would love to do to them). That was in my rookie years, now you will excuse me I think I have a major flashback coming on and need to be alone...
You're must obviously shilling for Monsanto, El Christador. First of all, you're userid 302969 (I'm 324741 and I have had this account for two years now), but your posting history has only two messages in it in all, both posted on the same day and in this thread. (Verify this by clicking on his userid number).
El Christador has posted 2 comments.
1 Re:They just trespassed on the fields or sprayed t posted on Friday August 02, @11:21AM (Score:1)
attached to Starving Nation Turns Down Bioengineered Corn
2 Re:Canadian Farmer ordered to pay for GE crops. posted on Friday August 02, @11:12AM (Score:1)
attached to Starving Nation Turns Down Bioengineered Corn
second of all, surprise, surprise I went through the trouble of reading the ruling and it's plain obvious that you're lying through your teeth. It may be a little tedious to read through all this so feel free to skip to the middle or the end. Just remember, it gets juicier and juicier near the end.
"[8] The plaintiffs' claim alleges that in 1998 the defendants planted glyphosate-resistant seeds to grow a crop of canola, for harvest, having a gene or cell that is the subject of the plaintiffs' patent."
The plaintiff alleges, in other words, the plaintiff claims that this is what happened. Nowhere in that court ruling is there any information whatsoever to be found on how exactly the Monsanto product got onto Mr. Schmeiser's property, i.e. whether Mr. Schmeiser intentionally obtained it by any means, or whether the contamination to his crop was transmitted by pollen, the latter being the more likely of the two.
"[11]The defendants do not deny the presence of Roundup Ready canola in their fields in 1998, but they urged at trial that neither Mr. Schmeiser nor Schmeiser Enterprises Ltd. have ever deliberately planted, or caused to be planted, any seeds licensed by the plaintiffs containing the patented gene. The defendants further asserted that substantial damage and loss has been suffered by them because of the herbicide-resistant plants. It is said for them that it is not possible to control the growth of the Roundup Ready canola with normal herbicides, it interferes with crop selection, making it difficult to plant anything other than canola, and it requires the adoption of new farming practices."
Obviously there is a new angle to the consequences of exposure to Monsanto products. Not only does it adulterate a farmer's existing seed stock, but as some seeds always remain on the field after harvest, that field can not easily be used to grow a different kind of crop as the Monsanto product is tenacious enough to evade other herbicides targetted at the former crop (= crop selection). As such, Monsanto has caused Mr. Schmeiser damage and not the other way around, and clearly shows the audacity of Monsanto to sue in the first place.
"12] The defendants urged at trial that by the unconfined release of the gene into the environment the plaintiffs have not controlled its spread, and did not intend to do so, and they have thus lost or waived their right to exercise an exclusive patent over the gene.
[13] The defendants further asserted at trial that Canadian Patent No. 1,313,830 is, and always has been, invalid and void because:
(a) the alleged invention is a life form intended for human consumption and is not the proper subject matter for a patent; it is self-propagating and can spread without human intervention;"
Let's put this into perspective for slashdot readers who are aware of Digital Rights Management issues: Monsanto's actions are tantamount to an ISV spreading their software using an internet worm or virus and extorting license fees from each and every infected site. Since Monsanto did not deactivate the plants ability to reproduce, and since Monsanto does have the ability to disable the reproduction process of plants (re Monsanto's controversial "Terminator" technology) they neglected to take appropiate steps to control the distribution of their product. After all, a company that is capable of manipulating such fundamental processes in a plant should very well be aware of the plants natural reproductive processes and the ramifications of that, such as the uncontrolled spread of their genetic manipulation by natural means such as pollination. Apparently sueing unintended recipients of an by its very nature extremely uncontrollable biological agent is Monsanto's idea of protecting its patents, and it is saddening to see that court accepting this notion.
The court ruling then lengthily expounds on what the Monsanto patents are exactly... so let's skip to:
"[25] Moreover, in my opinion, the construction of the patent, in relation to the claims in issue, is not contested except in relation to the claim for infringement. There the scope of the patent is in issue by the defence that since the defendants did not spray their 1998 crop of canola with Roundup herbicide, after it had emerged, they did not use the plaintiffs' invention."
Obviously if Schmeiser had intentionally infected his fields with Monsanto product he would have used their matching "Roundup" pesticide. Interesting, isn't it?
Now let's move on to the mystery of how exactly Mr. Schmeiser's seed-stock may have gotten corrupted:
"[34] I note that in 1996 one of the licensed farmers, Mr. Huber, a neighbour of Mr. Schmeiser, grew seed under license from Monsanto on a quarter section just north and west of, and diagonally adjacent to, Mr. Schmeiser's field No. 6. It was the evidence at trial of Mr. Schmeiser's hired man, Carlysle Moritz, that at the end of the 1996 crop year, a substantial swath of canola had blown from Mr. Huber's land onto field No. 6. There was no evidence that seed from Schmeiser's field No. 6 was saved in 1996 to be used as seed for his 1997 crop."
So what do we have here? A "licensed" Monsanto crop in the immediate vicinity of Mr. Schmeisers property as well as the admission that there is no evidence that any of the Monsanto product was intentionally saved for planting in the following year.
The ruling then laboriously recounts on how the crop samples were obtained, largely the testimony of the investigating firm's staff which obviously has a direct economic interest in Monsanto's case succeeding.
After that follows a brief recapitulation of the evidence in the case, the attempts of the defense to make the evidence inadmissible on the grounds that it was fraudulently obtained and that the integrity of both the process of gathering the evidence as well as the testimonies of individuals testifying on behalf of the plaintiff are highly questionable to the question of the validity of the patents itself. That last section in of itself is very interesting, to say the least. Anybody who tries to follow the courts reasoning will find that it does not reflect much on the natural processes which preclude Monsanto from owning such a patent, but on legal technicalities. (But then the very fabric of law is spun from legal technicalities isn't it?). This goes on for quiete a while until we get to the juicy part, the reasoning behind the ruling itself:
"[92] Thus a farmer whose field contains seed or plants originating from seed spilled into them, or blown as seed, in swaths from a neighbour's land or even growing from germination by pollen carried into his field from elsewhere by insects, birds, or by the wind, may own the seed or plants on his land even if he did not set about to plant them. He does not, however, own the right to the use of the patented gene, or of the seed or plant containing the patented gene or cell."
It's apparently that easy in Canada. You're the owner of whatever pleases itself to be blown onto your fields but if it so happens that someone owns the a patent on it, you owe them money!
"[94]Here the defendants urge that having introduced its invention for unconfined release into the environment without control over its dispersion, the plaintiffs, as inventor and licensee have lost any claim to enforcement of their rights to exclusive use. It is said for the defendants that Monsanto obtained regulatory approval for the "unconfined release" into the environment of the patented gene pursuant to the Seeds Regulations, C.R.C. c. 1400. Whether that is so is not significant in my view."
What is significant then, Your Honor? What gives Monsanto the ability to hold on to their patent after blatantly releasing their patented genes into the wild without any way to control their dispersion?
The answer to this is given by recounting the various precaution Monsanto takes to cash in on its patents, the most important apparently being random audits by investigative firms to make sure everybody pays up that has Monsanto product on their fields. In other words, I throw something in your mailbox you never wanted, I send a detective to your house and if he finds that in your mailbox I can send you a bill and sue you silly if you don't pay up. In regards to farming this means YOU have the responsibility to make sure there is no Monsanto product in your crop. YOU have to go through all that crop and weed out something which by it's very design has been made difficult to weed out. Good luck, I say.
"Indeed the weight of evidence in this case supports the conclusion that the plaintiffs undertook a variety of measures designed to control the unwanted spread of canola containing their patented gene and cell."
I don't think I have to comment on this much, it is so painfully obvious that we're dealing with a Kangaroo court here: Again, it is enough to simply send a bill to whoever has the misfortune of receiving something they've never wanted nor asked for and which is even causing them a lot of pain.
Without further ado we skip the exact details on how exactly the defendant unknowingly infringed on the patent and come to the ruling itself:
"[130] While discretion to grant an injunction restraining further use or sale of the subject matter of the patent is expressly vested in the Court under s. 57 of the Act, the defendants here submit such relief, if it be to restrain the growing of Roundup Ready canola, would be impossible to comply with in light of the uncontrollable spread of the patented gene."
What Your Honor is saying here is "I know it's impossible to avoid having inadvertently your fields contaminated with Monsanto's product..." but a paragraph later he sentences Schmeiser to stop using his 1997-1998 stock of seed, handing that stock of seed over to Monsanto and paying $105,000 of damages to Monsanto.
A couple of paragraphs later it really gets interesting again when the judge goes on with:
"Exemplary damages
[141]The plaintiffs also claim exemplary damages. In my opinion this is not a case for exemplary damages. Neither the corporate defendant nor Mr. Schmeiser acted in a manner that would warrant punishment or that would deserve condemnation by the Court. Only conduct of that order would warrant exemplary damages. (Lubrizol Corp. v. Imperial Oil Ltd. (1996), 67 C.P.R. (3d) 1 at 18 (F.C.A.))."
Yes! Your Honor is saying, "Yes Mr. Schmeiser, it's not your fault, you did nothing wrong and I'm not holding anything against you but you will have to pay up anyway..."
Didn't think someone would actually read it, did you?
I am in the position to influence purchase decisions and I will be extremely biased against HP for a very long time to come. Their behavior as "corporate citizens" does have an massive impact on how I view them to be dependable suppliers, and a company whose VP does something as (legally) inane as trotting out the "DMCA" to protect the reputation of their obviously flawed product... I suppose I need to explain no further.
Percy Schmeiser did buy and use Monsanto chemicals at one time or other, but he never voluntarily nor knowingly contaminated his field with Monsanto seeds:
Quote: 'In my case, I never had anything to do with Monsanto, outside of buying chemicals. I never signed a contract. If I would go to St. Louis and contaminate their plots--destroy what they have worked on for 40 years--I think I would be put in jail and the key thrown away.' Percy Schmeiser, June 19, 2000
I wonder who educated you, Citizen :-) Whoever did that, obviously did a thorough job. They're not "slightly more immune" to corporate pressure in Europe, they're just "slightly more finicky" about what goes over the wire and into the newspapers.
They've got a reason to be worried about importing genetically engineered crops into Zimbabwe, especially if it's seed from Monsanto. There is a story on Guerilla News Network about a Canadian farmer whose crop was infected with Monsanto engineered crop he never wanted and still was made to pay:
" (GNN) In a Kafkaesque ruling sure to send a chill up the spines of farmers around the world, a Canadian farmer has been ordered to pay thousands of dollars to Monsanto for violating their patent on genetically modified canola seed. The twist: the farmer, Percy Schmeiser, says he is accused of stealing something he never wanted in the first place. Schmeiser's fields were contaminated when pollen from genetically engineered seeds blew onto his then GE-free land from neighboring farms. Shortly after, Monsanto's "gene police" invaded his farm, took seed samples without his permission, and then charged him with violating Canadian patent law that says it's illegal for farmers to re-use or to grow Monsanto's GM seed without signing a licensing agreement. Even though it was Schmeiser whose fields were polluted with organisms he never wanted, the court says he must now pay Monsanto $10,000 for licensing fees and up to $75,000 in profits from his 1998 crop."
You can read the rest of the article here. For more in-depth information go to Percy Schmeiser's website.I especially like the part where they fly over farmers' fields and dump chemicals on them without knowledge or permission of the farmer to "prove" the farmers were using their seeds.
Why Antarctica? This is what I propose... Let's take Mars. Besides, it gets even colder there :-)
The IMEI number is also ESSENTIAL for tracking. Were there no IMEI, or could people change their IMEI at will, a criminal (you, me, anybody who needs to be tracked for some reason) could just change the SIM on the phone. With hundreds of different kinds of pre-paid SIMs out there, some of which don't even require ID at the point of sale, how would it be possible to track anyone and/or monitor their phone calls?
Sorry to hear that you're no longer interested in the 64-bit market segment. I can't really blame you, I suppose you're better off selling medical equipment like heart monitors. Too bad that you made it quiet clear that you have no intentions of ever coming back, or else you wouldn't have taken a shit right in our faces before you left.
You're playing the devil's advocate here, aren't you? I can do that too (and probably be a lot more honest in the process): How about "We need to put in extensive monitoring into rental cars so we can be compliant with the "Patriot" act"? :-)
This could be the Mihira system... (Sanskrit), or did you forget about the persian sun-god Mithra, they worshipped in Rome around 300 BCE? Or... since we're already on the subject of sun-gods, maybe it's the Ravi system... (Sanskrit, too), or did you forget all about Ra, the Egyptian sun-god?
Or maybe it's even the 'Shawna' system, the Persian word for sun, the word which points us in the direction of Jonas, the biblical character that got swallowed by a whale (like the sun gets swallowed in the evening by the horizon).
You know, there was civilization long before people came up with Latin and ancient Greek, and they didn't call that world Terra or Erde or Earth either..., so don't complain that some call Sol Sun, trust me there are a bunch of other words for that star such as the gaelic 'Grian' which incidentally is derived from another Sanskrit word for light and warmth (I believe Khris) from which of course we derive the name 'Christ' from. They never really stopped worshipping the sun in Rome and I doubt we'll ever stop with coming up with new names for it.