You could have been right, except that Schmeiser doesn's spray his crops with Roundup. He uses other herbicides instead. He actually has testified that he does not like Roundup. He used it for some spraying around the edges, as you said, but never on his entire crop. So he has no reason to take advantage of this particular property of the seeds.
Right. So as long as someone spent a sufficient amount of money producing something, we should allow them to do as they will. I better start saving, because I want to be above the law and supercede ethics too!
"Research in the 1960s and seventies revealed PCBs and other aromatic organochlorines to be potent carcinogens, and also traced them to a wide array of reproductive, developmental and immune system disorders (see page _). Their high chemical affinity for organic matter, particularly fat tissue, is responsible for their dramatic rates of bioaccumulation, and their wide dispersal throughout the North's aquatic food web: Arctic cod, for example, carry PCB concentrations 48 million times that of their surrounding waters, and predatory mammals such as polar bears can harbor tissue concentrations of PCBs more than fifty times greater than that. Though the manufacture of PCBs was banned in the United States in 1976, its toxic and endocrine disruptive effects persist worldwide."
Hey, anyone affected by this is expected to pay royalties!!!!
"[93] I do not agree that the situation is comparable to the "stray bull" cases that recognize that the progeny of stray bulls impregnating cows of another belong to that other, and that the owner of the straying bull may be liable in damages that may be caused to the owner of the cows. Further, the circumstances here are not akin to those cases that the defendants urge are part of the larger law of admixture, where property of A introduced by A without B's intervention to similar property of B from which it is indistinguishable, becomes the property of B. Monsanto does have ownership in its patented gene and cell and pursuant to the Act it has the exclusive use of its invention. That is an important factor which distinguishes this case from the others on which the defendants rely."
In what way are the situations dissimilar? Does he really think that simply stating their dissimilarity is sufficient?
When I was in high school, we whited out the address on the envelope of a college application and wrote one of my friend's addresses on there instead. We wrote a little note explaining why he was getting a letter from us (it was a "scientific" experiment), put it inside, and dropped it in the mailbox.
He got the letter a few days later with a note from his mail carrier saying that he owed the post office 32 cents. His reaction was really funny. Trust me. I read the post below about how the companies pay beforehand for the postage, so that it does not matter how much the envelope weighs when returned. After reading this post, you can see that this is certainly not the case. Hee hee.
It's not the same at all. I was saying I don't care from my perspective as the user of the free service. So, in your analogy, the man holding the gun to the person's head would be the one who "doesn't care". Naturally, I, being on the receiving end, would care, as I am sure the NYT does, but of course the man holding the gun is unconcerned with potential damage to the recipient.
Not caring is not a rationalization at all. It is stating a FACT. A rationalization would attempt to excuse my actions, which I in no wAy would attempt to do. I simply DO NOT CARE about the potential effects of this particular action. You are obviously wrong.
Look genius, the fact of the matter is that I don't need ANY moral justification to view the NYT without going through the free registration process. I don't rationalize for ten minutes before clicking on the partners link. I don't expound several minutes worth of evangelism on why it's all OK. The truth is that I, like most people, do not give a rat's ass about the NYT's ad revenue.
This may appear on the surface to be a callous attitude, but in actuality it is merely an air of utter and complete indifference about an issue which is very small, distant, and unimportant to me personally. I feel no guilt or shame from having clicked the partners link. Look, I'm doing it again right now. Am I becoming more evil every time I do it? Am I starting to care yet? Nope, check back again later...
Next time you want me to feel sorry because I caused a corporation to lose money, do yourself a favor and shove it up your ass. Because I don't care about you very much either.
Everyone who says that Nader cost Gore the election, shut up! Seriously. Think about this logically for a second. If liberals vote for Nader, then Gore is NOT liberal enough for those people. This is really obvious. Nader is the only REAL Democrat in this race; he's not even really a member of the Green Party. If Gore's environmental record wasn't so terrible in comparison; if Gore could actually come through with some of the trash he talks during his campaign, maybe then we would vote for Gore.
Why should I vote for your candidate? Al Gore is not my candidate, and if I cost Al Gore the victory with my vote (which, as I explained above, is not the case) then I guess that's fine with me. My candidate lost either way.
Next time someone tells me Nader cost Gore the election, I'm going to turn around and say, NO! GORE COST NADER THE ELECTION!!!!
I know this is an old subject, and you do make some good points, so I won't waste too much more of your time on this, but poor people don't have cars, electricity, i.e everything they possibly need. You are closing your eyes to the fact that actual poor people even exist. That is your only mistake. Everything else you said, though i don't necessarily agree with it, is correct nonetheless.
Yeah, let's eliminate the minimum wage. Those honest corporations (like the one where your father cut large portions of the labor, thus putting many out of a job) would be sure to still give their workers what they're worth. After all, they're really being fair to those thousands of workers in foreign countries who work upwards of 80 hours a week and make hardly enough to buy the basic necessities of life. Oh, but they wouldn't do that here! Corporations are good! They've never demonstrated a greedy nature (COUGH!).
I could also make the point that without the labor, the company your father worked for could do NOTHING! Without labor, products do not get produced. period. Don't even talk about prices; if it weren't for those underneath, there would be no product to speak of.
The new economic ideology should be one of stability. Our market favors immense growth; this growth pretty much being defined as the concentration of more and more wealth in the hands of only a few large corporations. This is goal number one of our economy. We should be favoring the idea that success should be measured by stability instead of growth. Growth is, after all, not indefinite.
Letting the wealthy keep more of their money so that they can invest it better is an old idea. What a shock that the man who wrote most prolifically on the subject was multi-billionaire Andrew Carnegie. It makes sense somehow for rich men to advocate more money being held in the hands of the rich. This idea has never worked for our economy. Not even once. Sorry, your theory has been tested and failed already.
It is exactly this "let them eat cake" attitude that led to the French Revolution. It's all about class dissatisfaction.
As for labor making SO much money, coming from a family supported by an unskilled laborer, I can tell you, you're fooling yourself. You can deny it all you want, but what you say is not true. Denying the existence of a vast, poor middle class is not going to make them go away. They're out there. People just have to be willing to open their eyes.
What about the fact that the two main parties just don't represent the views of everyone. Liberals and Conservatives aren't even necessarily opposites; and even if they were, there are so many people who are opposed to both. Why do you think no one votes in this country?
I think a clash of ideologies is exactly what we need; a spirited debate in which every single American finds a voice to represent them. I'm not trying to make a cliche here; I just feel underrepresented by Gore and Bush.
First of all, you are a coward for not putting any identity on your inflammatory and very offensive post. Don't want people here to know how you really feel, eh?
Your stereotyping of union people is very childish and indicative of your ignorance of that type of environment. I was, of course, not implying that skilled professionals do not do real work; perhaps you misconstrued my comment intentionally so that you could post your ridiculous, fantastical comments about how all union workers are lazy. Let me tell you a fun little story about a union called the Teamsters and a place of business called United AG in Omaha, Nebraska. United AG didn't like the Union guys, since they had to shell out enough pay so that they could have cars and houses and MAYBE even some day send their kids (like me) to college. So they began to hire what they called Part Time labor. Part time laborers were not in the union contract. Oh, don't fool yourself into thinking they were different. Part timers worked the same hours (approx. 60 a week) as the full timers; they even worked the same shifts, right along side the full-timers, they just got no insurance and about 5 dollars less pay per hour.
Every time the contract came up, the company managed to weasel in more part timers. During the last five or ten years of AG's operation, not ONE full timer was ever hired again.
My point is that without a union, the company demonstrated conclusively that they would have screwed every worker as much as possible and OUR LIVES WOULD HAVE BEEN SHIT. So take your union-bashing crap and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!!!!!
Point taken; i know it's an extreme example, but I think it was obvious from some of the more disturbing articles in there that some or most of the companies involved were eager to make more money any way they could. Unlike the majority of the German populace at the time,they also do not have the excuse that they didn't know any better; those companies were around before Hitler, and they were still there after. And they are capable of doing the same thing even now, in my opinion; they're just not allowed to.
Most products are not manufactured in the United States that we use here, except for domestic farm products, which become more and more corporatized every day. Trust me, I live in Nebraska, and the picture of the average family farmer is not exactly pretty around here. Given that you are obviously a Republican, and that you don't like to give any of your money away, you're probably not willing to support measures which give aid to poor farmers, since I'm sure corporations can do so much better. (Insert sarcasm here).
Free trade is not good for the average worker. What you are saying is a myth. In actuality, there are very few things produced in the US which could not be produced abroad, and the fact that poorer countries have fewer rights than we do makes them easier to exploit as labor. Why hire a bitchy US union type who will demand fair pay and benefits when you can get some kid from Indonesia who's never heard of unions?
Your other point about how everyone should invest their money has also failed. Not everyone owns stock; only the wealthiest own a significant enough portion that they can be successful from it. Investing is NOT creating new jobs, despite what you think, and it is certainly not putting money in anyone else's hands. Government programs like Medicare and Social Security, though far from perfect, are still making better attempts at it than the wealthy would ever do on their own.
Reagan thought this way, and it damn near ruined the country. Trickle-down economics have never once been shown to work for anyone, especially the lower and middle class.
This battle isn't about any of your issues. I wish it were, but it clearly is not. It is not even about Bush vs. Gore; it is about Corporatism vs. Nader. The two main political parties have set themselves up as the only two choices you have; in actuality giving you only the illusion of a choice. Nader is the real choice; and it baffles me that no one sees it that way. Nader is the only candidate out there who has an anti-corporatist message. Gore's weak attempts to speak against corrupt HMO's during the debates were nothing more than pathetic. These people say nothing reassuring.
For anyone voting for Gore or Bush: click this link to find out what corporations with no federal government regulations are capable of:
You haven't read anything that Nader has said at all. Nader sticks up for the labor class; the class that does all the REAL work in this country and gets paid almost squat for it. Not to mention that due to increased exploitation of cheap foreign labor markets, our laborers are ALL in severe danger of losing their jobs. Just ask my Dad, who worked at the same warehouse for 23 years before he got laid off in an anti-union corporate merger, if he thinks that the labor class is so well-off these days.
The problem with jerks like you is that you don't even try to understand anyone else's problems. You just whine about having to give a few more dollars of your precious wealth away. Thanks a lot.
Of course we should tax something that makes people wealthy! It's simple economics! Tap the biggest sources of income/wealth first. What are you going to tax? Food stamps?
You might want to sit down for this one... I heard at least a hundred examples of other companies violating your patent on Lawsuit related business practice. You better go hire a whole team of lawyers for this one...
They never said one thing that was backed up by any evidence, or even a real world example. They just basically called us nerds and tried to piss a bunch of people off!
I don't even think the author of that article actually has read any of the comments made in the Linux Journal. If he did, he would understand why some people might be offended by SDMI. The least he could do is act like anyone else besides him has a point.
has become that Apple hunts Mac enthusiasts down in the streets for sport. Don't they know that the only people interested in Mac rumors are Macintosh users? They're killing off their own customer base, for Pete's sake!!!!
Your point is entirely valid; however, in general (i.e. not at every company) shareholders and management benefit each other, and help the employee very little. IPOs usually happen when a company is only becoming large, not when it's already a corporate monster, so an IPO for instance probably would be very nice for all of the employees. But if you go work for a company that's already really well established, I doubt you'll see a cent of any of that wonderful management money.
You're definitely right on about projects with no management - i'm sure it's a nightmare. What most projects need is organization that comes from below, not from above. Look at it this way:
Our current business model: Business is a separate layer existing on top of the development and production processes. Administration is for the benefit of business, not development/production, even though business's only logical purpose in existence is to organize and improve development. Administration has the most authority, so naturally they only work to benefit themselves. Developers/producers; i.e the real workers have basically no say in this process, which most likely interferes with the efficiency of their operation.
A better, more sane business model: Since the development of the product is the most crucial aspect of a business's purpose, developers should rule the company, with administrative, marketing, sales, etc. types as advisors on the deveoper's payroll. Money should be distributed by the people who do the most work within the company: the developers and producers! The administrators make suggestions, but have no real authority.
And yes, it could theoretically work, and could help to eliminate the fact that right now, business is just a separate society leeching off of the real society and bringing no benefit to it whatsoever (it's called a PARASITE.)
Slashdot Mirror
You could have been right, except that Schmeiser doesn's spray his crops with Roundup. He uses other herbicides instead. He actually has testified that he does not like Roundup. He used it for some spraying around the edges, as you said, but never on his entire crop. So he has no reason to take advantage of this particular property of the seeds.
Right. So as long as someone spent a sufficient amount of money producing something, we should allow them to do as they will. I better start saving, because I want to be above the law and supercede ethics too!
"Research in the 1960s and seventies revealed PCBs and other aromatic organochlorines to be potent carcinogens, and also traced them to a wide array of reproductive, developmental and immune system disorders (see page _). Their high chemical affinity for organic matter, particularly fat tissue, is responsible for their dramatic rates of bioaccumulation, and their wide dispersal throughout the North's aquatic food web: Arctic cod, for example, carry PCB concentrations 48 million times that of their surrounding waters, and predatory mammals such as polar bears can harbor tissue concentrations of PCBs more than fifty times greater than that. Though the manufacture of PCBs was banned in the United States in 1976, its toxic and endocrine disruptive effects persist worldwide."
Hey, anyone affected by this is expected to pay royalties!!!!
"[93] I do not agree that the situation is comparable to the "stray bull" cases that recognize that the progeny of stray bulls impregnating cows of another belong to that other, and that the owner of the straying bull may be liable in damages that may be caused to the owner of the cows. Further, the circumstances here are not akin to those cases that the defendants urge are part of the larger law of admixture, where property of A introduced by A without B's intervention to similar property of B from which it is indistinguishable, becomes the property of B. Monsanto does have ownership in its patented gene and cell and pursuant to the Act it has the exclusive use of its invention. That is an important factor which distinguishes this case from the others on which the defendants rely."
In what way are the situations dissimilar? Does he really think that simply stating their dissimilarity is sufficient?
When I was in high school, we whited out the address on the envelope of a college application and wrote one of my friend's addresses on there instead. We wrote a little note explaining why he was getting a letter from us (it was a "scientific" experiment), put it inside, and dropped it in the mailbox.
He got the letter a few days later with a note from his mail carrier saying that he owed the post office 32 cents. His reaction was really funny. Trust me. I read the post below about how the companies pay beforehand for the postage, so that it does not matter how much the envelope weighs when returned. After reading this post, you can see that this is certainly not the case. Hee hee.
It's not the same at all. I was saying I don't care from my perspective as the user of the free service. So, in your analogy, the man holding the gun to the person's head would be the one who "doesn't care". Naturally, I, being on the receiving end, would care, as I am sure the NYT does, but of course the man holding the gun is unconcerned with potential damage to the recipient.
Not caring is not a rationalization at all. It is stating a FACT. A rationalization would attempt to excuse my actions, which I in no wAy would attempt to do. I simply DO NOT CARE about the potential effects of this particular action. You are obviously wrong.
Look genius, the fact of the matter is that I don't need ANY moral justification to view the NYT without going through the free registration process. I don't rationalize for ten minutes before clicking on the partners link. I don't expound several minutes worth of evangelism on why it's all OK. The truth is that I, like most people, do not give a rat's ass about the NYT's ad revenue.
This may appear on the surface to be a callous attitude, but in actuality it is merely an air of utter and complete indifference about an issue which is very small, distant, and unimportant to me personally. I feel no guilt or shame from having clicked the partners link. Look, I'm doing it again right now. Am I becoming more evil every time I do it? Am I starting to care yet? Nope, check back again later...
Next time you want me to feel sorry because I caused a corporation to lose money, do yourself a favor and shove it up your ass. Because I don't care about you very much either.
Everyone who says that Nader cost Gore the election, shut up! Seriously. Think about this logically for a second. If liberals vote for Nader, then Gore is NOT liberal enough for those people. This is really obvious. Nader is the only REAL Democrat in this race; he's not even really a member of the Green Party. If Gore's environmental record wasn't so terrible in comparison; if Gore could actually come through with some of the trash he talks during his campaign, maybe then we would vote for Gore.
Why should I vote for your candidate? Al Gore is not my candidate, and if I cost Al Gore the victory with my vote (which, as I explained above, is not the case) then I guess that's fine with me. My candidate lost either way.
Next time someone tells me Nader cost Gore the election, I'm going to turn around and say, NO! GORE COST NADER THE ELECTION!!!!
I know this is an old subject, and you do make some good points, so I won't waste too much more of your time on this, but poor people don't have cars, electricity, i.e everything they possibly need. You are closing your eyes to the fact that actual poor people even exist. That is your only mistake. Everything else you said, though i don't necessarily agree with it, is correct nonetheless.
Yeah, let's eliminate the minimum wage. Those honest corporations (like the one where your father cut large portions of the labor, thus putting many out of a job) would be sure to still give their workers what they're worth. After all, they're really being fair to those thousands of workers in foreign countries who work upwards of 80 hours a week and make hardly enough to buy the basic necessities of life. Oh, but they wouldn't do that here! Corporations are good! They've never demonstrated a greedy nature (COUGH!).
I could also make the point that without the labor, the company your father worked for could do NOTHING! Without labor, products do not get produced. period. Don't even talk about prices; if it weren't for those underneath, there would be no product to speak of.
The new economic ideology should be one of stability. Our market favors immense growth; this growth pretty much being defined as the concentration of more and more wealth in the hands of only a few large corporations. This is goal number one of our economy. We should be favoring the idea that success should be measured by stability instead of growth. Growth is, after all, not indefinite.
Letting the wealthy keep more of their money so that they can invest it better is an old idea. What a shock that the man who wrote most prolifically on the subject was multi-billionaire Andrew Carnegie. It makes sense somehow for rich men to advocate more money being held in the hands of the rich. This idea has never worked for our economy. Not even once. Sorry, your theory has been tested and failed already.
It is exactly this "let them eat cake" attitude that led to the French Revolution. It's all about class dissatisfaction.
As for labor making SO much money, coming from a family supported by an unskilled laborer, I can tell you, you're fooling yourself. You can deny it all you want, but what you say is not true. Denying the existence of a vast, poor middle class is not going to make them go away. They're out there. People just have to be willing to open their eyes.
What about the fact that the two main parties just don't represent the views of everyone. Liberals and Conservatives aren't even necessarily opposites; and even if they were, there are so many people who are opposed to both. Why do you think no one votes in this country?
I think a clash of ideologies is exactly what we need; a spirited debate in which every single American finds a voice to represent them. I'm not trying to make a cliche here; I just feel underrepresented by Gore and Bush.
First of all, you are a coward for not putting any identity on your inflammatory and very offensive post. Don't want people here to know how you really feel, eh?
Your stereotyping of union people is very childish and indicative of your ignorance of that type of environment. I was, of course, not implying that skilled professionals do not do real work; perhaps you misconstrued my comment intentionally so that you could post your ridiculous, fantastical comments about how all union workers are lazy. Let me tell you a fun little story about a union called the Teamsters and a place of business called United AG in Omaha, Nebraska. United AG didn't like the Union guys, since they had to shell out enough pay so that they could have cars and houses and MAYBE even some day send their kids (like me) to college. So they began to hire what they called Part Time labor. Part time laborers were not in the union contract. Oh, don't fool yourself into thinking they were different. Part timers worked the same hours (approx. 60 a week) as the full timers; they even worked the same shifts, right along side the full-timers, they just got no insurance and about 5 dollars less pay per hour.
Every time the contract came up, the company managed to weasel in more part timers. During the last five or ten years of AG's operation, not ONE full timer was ever hired again.
My point is that without a union, the company demonstrated conclusively that they would have screwed every worker as much as possible and OUR LIVES WOULD HAVE BEEN SHIT. So take your union-bashing crap and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!!!!!
-Dan Rempe
Point taken; i know it's an extreme example, but I think it was obvious from some of the more disturbing articles in there that some or most of the companies involved were eager to make more money any way they could. Unlike the majority of the German populace at the time,they also do not have the excuse that they didn't know any better; those companies were around before Hitler, and they were still there after. And they are capable of doing the same thing even now, in my opinion; they're just not allowed to.
Most products are not manufactured in the United States that we use here, except for domestic farm products, which become more and more corporatized every day. Trust me, I live in Nebraska, and the picture of the average family farmer is not exactly pretty around here. Given that you are obviously a Republican, and that you don't like to give any of your money away, you're probably not willing to support measures which give aid to poor farmers, since I'm sure corporations can do so much better. (Insert sarcasm here).
Free trade is not good for the average worker. What you are saying is a myth. In actuality, there are very few things produced in the US which could not be produced abroad, and the fact that poorer countries have fewer rights than we do makes them easier to exploit as labor. Why hire a bitchy US union type who will demand fair pay and benefits when you can get some kid from Indonesia who's never heard of unions?
Your other point about how everyone should invest their money has also failed. Not everyone owns stock; only the wealthiest own a significant enough portion that they can be successful from it. Investing is NOT creating new jobs, despite what you think, and it is certainly not putting money in anyone else's hands. Government programs like Medicare and Social Security, though far from perfect, are still making better attempts at it than the wealthy would ever do on their own.
Reagan thought this way, and it damn near ruined the country. Trickle-down economics have never once been shown to work for anyone, especially the lower and middle class.
This battle isn't about any of your issues. I wish it were, but it clearly is not. It is not even about Bush vs. Gore; it is about Corporatism vs. Nader. The two main political parties have set themselves up as the only two choices you have; in actuality giving you only the illusion of a choice. Nader is the real choice; and it baffles me that no one sees it that way. Nader is the only candidate out there who has an anti-corporatist message. Gore's weak attempts to speak against corrupt HMO's during the debates were nothing more than pathetic. These people say nothing reassuring.
For anyone voting for Gore or Bush: click this link to find out what corporations with no federal government regulations are capable of:
http://theawfultruth.com/salbmw
Then, go vote for Nader.
-Dan Rempe
You haven't read anything that Nader has said at all. Nader sticks up for the labor class; the class that does all the REAL work in this country and gets paid almost squat for it. Not to mention that due to increased exploitation of cheap foreign labor markets, our laborers are ALL in severe danger of losing their jobs. Just ask my Dad, who worked at the same warehouse for 23 years before he got laid off in an anti-union corporate merger, if he thinks that the labor class is so well-off these days.
The problem with jerks like you is that you don't even try to understand anyone else's problems. You just whine about having to give a few more dollars of your precious wealth away. Thanks a lot.
-Dan Rempe
Of course we should tax something that makes people wealthy! It's simple economics! Tap the biggest sources of income/wealth first. What are you going to tax? Food stamps?
Naked PC's are totally indecent! They need to cover their shame with Microsoft Windows (TM). Society is simply not ready for these nudist machines.
You might want to sit down for this one... I heard at least a hundred examples of other companies violating your patent on Lawsuit related business practice. You better go hire a whole team of lawyers for this one...
314. I did a survey.
They never said one thing that was backed up by any evidence, or even a real world example. They just basically called us nerds and tried to piss a bunch of people off!
I don't even think the author of that article actually has read any of the comments made in the Linux Journal. If he did, he would understand why some people might be offended by SDMI. The least he could do is act like anyone else besides him has a point.
has become that Apple hunts Mac enthusiasts down in the streets for sport. Don't they know that the only people interested in Mac rumors are Macintosh users? They're killing off their own customer base, for Pete's sake!!!!
Your point is entirely valid; however, in general (i.e. not at every company) shareholders and management benefit each other, and help the employee very little. IPOs usually happen when a company is only becoming large, not when it's already a corporate monster, so an IPO for instance probably would be very nice for all of the employees. But if you go work for a company that's already really well established, I doubt you'll see a cent of any of that wonderful management money.
No, but I will now! Very interesting.
You're definitely right on about projects with no management - i'm sure it's a nightmare. What most projects need is organization that comes from below, not from above. Look at it this way:
Our current business model: Business is a separate layer existing on top of the development and production processes. Administration is for the benefit of business, not development/production, even though business's only logical purpose in existence is to organize and improve development. Administration has the most authority, so naturally they only work to benefit themselves. Developers/producers; i.e the real workers have basically no say in this process, which most likely interferes with the efficiency of their operation.
A better, more sane business model: Since the development of the product is the most crucial aspect of a business's purpose, developers should rule the company, with administrative, marketing, sales, etc. types as advisors on the deveoper's payroll. Money should be distributed by the people who do the most work within the company: the developers and producers! The administrators make suggestions, but have no real authority.
And yes, it could theoretically work, and could help to eliminate the fact that right now, business is just a separate society leeching off of the real society and bringing no benefit to it whatsoever (it's called a PARASITE.)
I've said my piece.