The fact that a product is necessary on a daily basis for a healthy life cannot be seen to require it's producers to give it away. Are we going to ask farmers to give away their crops because we all need to eat?
Not crops, but seeds. Super-seeds. And just some of it, enough to startup another farm. The (already poor) farmers - (I hope) - would give some to their neighbour, if her family was starving. The already rich... won't. They not only won't, but also take extra measures to make sure that the starving can't. Which of course is a different matter in the rich world, where we have a blessed shortage of starving people, as compared to where people die of famine every day. How much would it hurt this company if they gave (yes, gave) seeds - not crops, but "enriched" seeds with methods of normal replication preserved to these starving farmers?
Your drug analogy is flawed, because drugs are not self-replicating, and plants are. If drugs were self-replicating, every company that produced them would take steps to keep people buying them, and we wouldn't think twice about it.
The purpose of my analogy was to drive home the point that someone made the choice to add functionality to restrict use, in a product that could be directly beneficial not just for all mankind, but especially so for the already seriously exposed groups. If this was a secret recipe for ice-cream, or some extra ('scuse the pun) potent viagra - I wouldn't care at all which measures they added to the product to keep others from sharing it.
And yes, of course, it's not just the corporation I hold morally responsible - it's much easier to hold responsible the people of flesh and blood behind this corporation.
Monsanto is doing what Monsanto was designed to do: making money for its shareholders. Don't fault it for not giving things away any more than you would a car for not flying or a toaster for not doing your laundry.
How could I ever hope to see Monsanto's behaviour change if I didn't say straight out what I thought of it? The more people who makes the decision not to invest in them, or buy their products, the clearer the message will become.
While perhaps you and I do not bear as much individual blame far this, we are still saddled with our share of the collective guilt until such a time as we can sway the minds of our fellows.
The more we actively work for it, the faster that time comes. Some people will be harder to sway - for example the AC that also replied to my post (and won't get a proper reply from me until properly logged in).
I totally believe in the responsibility of mankind to care for the least fortunate of our species. I give from what I have, not as much as I could, but certainly more than many in this country. I am going into the unpaid, under-appreciated field of government-funded plant breeding specifically because I believe such work is important, and I believe working to allow people to fulfill this most basic of need is among the noblest things I could do with my life. Am I doing everything I possibly could? No, but neither are you or anyone else in the first world.
Somewhere, a starving kid is holding his faith up, hoping that people like you one day will be in charge to make the right decisions.
I believe that the idea of altering and designing individual genes for our crops is something that follows naturally after hundreds (thousands?) of years of larger-scale "refining of the plant's properties".
Now when we have the technology to make plants bigger, better and feed more people, I believe it is our duty to do it.
So, these people do business, and obviously don't want to lose control over their product. So they build in what we could call copy-prevention measures. Understandable, right?
Understandable if it were a software product. Software products are very seldom something that a person needs on a day-to-day basis to live a healthy life.
But food is, and here the fine Monsanto people are selling a crop that has advantages over its non-GMO cousins. Something that can feed more people - reduce starvation in parts of the world where food is scarce. This they know of. Yet, they choose to view those areas, where children's ribs are way too visible through the skin, and undernourishment is the norm, as just another part of the market, where control over the product is just as important as in other parts of the world, where tons of hamburger-fed flesh are lying suntanning on the beaches, and the diseases related to a too well-fed life are becoming more and more apparent.
It's their product, their choice, no? Who am I to say that they should give away their hard-earned designed seed, copy-protection disabled here, to those upon whose faces the fairy of obesity has never smiled?
If this was a drug company, having just found a cheap, permanent cure for AIDS, and made the decision to deliberately turn off / change some functionality to make the effect of the drug time-limited instead of permanent, let's say for five years, after which the patient will need a refill, if this was the case, would I be right in calling them "exploiting the sick and dying" - yes to an extent more so than the rest of us, who did not make that decision?
Monsanto is selling what they call "Terminator technology" (first reference I found: http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/sterileSeed.htm) to countries where getting enough food to survive for the day could be a problem.
The "technology" is a fancy word for genetically designing the next-generation seeds sterile, so that the farmers can't grow any new plants from the seeds produced from plants grown by Monsanto seeds.
Now, very few things pisses me off to the extent that this kind of behaviour does. (I can actually start sweating, merely thinking about this)
The idea of exploiting the starving seems to be good business for the Monsanto people.
This kind of behaviour - maximizing profits, disregard for human life, and the complete lack of any moral consideration, is, I believe, one of few that is taking us in a direction which ultimately will bring down the sad downfall (sudden, fiery death for the masses is still a threat) of humanity.
To me, the people who profit from selling these "Terminated seeds" (I here refrain from spilling my thoughts too bluntly, especially avoiding a sentence containing a suggested use of the words "Monsanto executives" and "terminate") to starving people, occupy a niche lower in the food chain than people who murder the elderly for money, and those who sell women and children for sexual exploitation and their personal profit.
Please, even if you disagree with my views, let at least the facts about this be known.
You are using the word "protect" in the old, unfashionable sense.
The new meaning (popularized by the true cancer of the Earth - human greed, incarnate here in the ever growing metastasis of megacorporations, always looking for more resources to eat into and exploit, eventually killing the host organism in the process), the new meaning of the word "Protect", is, of course, no secret here, "To hinder from, to restrict". Just as in the good old meaning of the more politically neutral and widely used "Write protection", remember? Except here we get the doubtful honour of getting restricted from ourselves, yes, and by the very entities we trust our money too (trust seems very unilateral when buying media these days).
Also in this brave, new vocabulary: "Secure", which of course is "from the tamperings of the lawful owner of this device".
[...] and one of the ways you can reduce the risks of getting unwanted software on your machine is to only accept digitally signed software from vendors that you trust.
This is true. However, the keyword is "trust".
I would never trust a company that has been lying, tricking and deceiving their customers practically from day one. I would never recommend anyone to deal with a software company that deliberately coded their products to break when used with a competitors.
Lying, deceiving, locking-in their customers for reasons of pure greed only.
How about a popup window that notifies the user that something tried to install software, or run a signed applet (with more privileges) on the computer - and that this functionality is disabled by default in the browser until the user explicitly sets an option to enable it.
Yesterday, for the first time, I was warned by Firefox that the site (don't ask:^) I was visiting 1) tried to install software and 2) Wanted to run a signed applet (with a seemingly fake cert from "Thawte consulting").
To protect the "clueless user", installing software should by default require some more actions by a user than a single click.
Guard #1: There's a problem in block 47. Guard #2: The rapists and child molesters again? Guard #1: Yep, they have started beating and selling the spammers for sexual services. Guard #2: So, what's the problem? Guard #1: There arent' enough of the former group. Guard #2: Aah, let's transfer some from block #19 to even out the numbers.
A bunch of people helping each other to survive is a product of natural selection, not its absence.
This made me nod and smile a bit - yes, indeed, a society that collectively cares for the weaker individuals and has a redistribution system of money (work) to accomodate this, is one that evolutionary is superior to a society of selfish individual quests for power and wealth.
In couple of years we should be able to artificially enhance IQ in humans, so overall we should improve.
What means of enhancing intelligence do count as "artificial" - as opposed to "natural"? A special diet? Cunningly crafted vitamin supplies? Specially designed education tools and plans?
Or should the line between "artificial" and "natural" be drawn at deliberate genetic alterations?
This may be a good thing to consider, when talking "ethics".
Well, maybe some sane country like Norway or Canada,
And just how long would they remain "sane" when living with the status as "superpower"? How long before they too turned paranoid, or pissed off somebody and really got something to worry about?
Has there been studies on how even being targeted with nuclear weapoins for prolonged periods affects human psychology, and in the extent, foreign politics?
There was said something about how power corrupts.... Perhaps every state should have plans for how _not_ to grow too large or powerful. An international agreement to keep world domination in check. (No, a perpetual state of war isn't it.:)
Re:Grand Mariner
on
The Music Man
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Hear the rhyme of the ancient mariner,
See his eye as he downloads one of three
Mesmerises one of the Kazaa guests
Stay here and listen to the nightmares of MP3!
You closed down all those nuclear reactors already?
No, thought so. While they are running - and producing about 20% of the electricity in the United States - if what I read is accurate - why not let those hot rods on the street be powered (indirectly) by those other hot rods..:)
The maxim I always use is: The company that holds your account never needs to ask you for your password since they already have it.
Eh, unless they want to verify that you know the right password, which is what these kind of scams are giving the impression of - a complete login page.
Slashdot Mirror
I swear, I had to read that headline three times before I got that it didn't read:
:)
MPAA releases software for patents
Just reading the first word probably made me automatically expect the rest of the headline to be some evil deed, so hey, it's understandable, right?
The fact that a product is necessary on a daily basis for a healthy life cannot be seen to require it's producers to give it away. Are we going to ask farmers to give away their crops because we all need to eat?
... won't. They not only won't, but also take extra measures to make sure that the starving can't. Which of course is a different matter in the rich world, where we have a blessed shortage of starving people, as compared to where people die of famine every day. How much would it hurt this company if they gave (yes, gave) seeds - not crops, but "enriched" seeds with methods of normal replication preserved to these starving farmers?
Not crops, but seeds. Super-seeds. And just some of it, enough to startup another farm. The (already poor) farmers - (I hope) - would give some to their neighbour, if her family was starving. The already rich
Your drug analogy is flawed, because drugs are not self-replicating, and plants are. If drugs were self-replicating, every company that produced them would take steps to keep people buying them, and we wouldn't think twice about it.
The purpose of my analogy was to drive home the point that someone made the choice to add functionality to restrict use, in a product that could be directly beneficial not just for all mankind, but especially so for the already seriously exposed groups. If this was a secret recipe for ice-cream, or some extra ('scuse the pun) potent viagra - I wouldn't care at all which measures they added to the product to keep others from sharing it.
And yes, of course, it's not just the corporation I hold morally responsible - it's much easier to hold responsible the people of flesh and blood behind this corporation.
Monsanto is doing what Monsanto was designed to do: making money for its shareholders. Don't fault it for not giving things away any more than you would a car for not flying or a toaster for not doing your laundry.
How could I ever hope to see Monsanto's behaviour change if I didn't say straight out what I thought of it? The more people who makes the decision not to invest in them, or buy their products, the clearer the message will become.
While perhaps you and I do not bear as much individual blame far this, we are still saddled with our share of the collective guilt until such a time as we can sway the minds of our fellows.
The more we actively work for it, the faster that time comes. Some people will be harder to sway - for example the AC that also replied to my post (and won't get a proper reply from me until properly logged in).
I totally believe in the responsibility of mankind to care for the least fortunate of our species. I give from what I have, not as much as I could, but certainly more than many in this country. I am going into the unpaid, under-appreciated field of government-funded plant breeding specifically because I believe such work is important, and I believe working to allow people to fulfill this most basic of need is among the noblest things I could do with my life. Am I doing everything I possibly could? No, but neither are you or anyone else in the first world.
Somewhere, a starving kid is holding his faith up, hoping that people like you one day will be in charge to make the right decisions.
I believe that the idea of altering and designing individual genes for our crops is something that follows naturally after hundreds (thousands?) of years of larger-scale "refining of the plant's properties".
Now when we have the technology to make plants bigger, better and feed more people, I believe it is our duty to do it.
So, these people do business, and obviously don't want to lose control over their product. So they build in what we could call copy-prevention measures. Understandable, right?
Understandable if it were a software product. Software products are very seldom something that a person needs on a day-to-day basis to live a healthy life.
But food is, and here the fine Monsanto people are selling a crop that has advantages over its non-GMO cousins. Something that can feed more people - reduce starvation in parts of the world where food is scarce. This they know of. Yet, they choose to view those areas, where children's ribs are way too visible through the skin, and undernourishment is the norm, as just another part of the market, where control over the product is just as important as in other parts of the world, where tons of hamburger-fed flesh are lying suntanning on the beaches, and the diseases related to a too well-fed life are becoming more and more apparent.
It's their product, their choice, no? Who am I to say that they should give away their hard-earned designed seed, copy-protection disabled here, to those upon whose faces the fairy of obesity has never smiled?
If this was a drug company, having just found a cheap, permanent cure for AIDS, and made the decision to deliberately turn off / change some functionality to make the effect of the drug time-limited instead of permanent, let's say for five years, after which the patient will need a refill, if this was the case, would I be right in calling them "exploiting the sick and dying" - yes to an extent more so than the rest of us, who did not make that decision?
Monsanto is selling what they call "Terminator technology" (first reference I found: http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/sterileSeed.htm ) to countries where getting enough food to survive for the day could be a problem.
The "technology" is a fancy word for genetically designing the next-generation seeds sterile, so that the farmers can't grow any new plants from the seeds produced from plants grown by Monsanto seeds.
Now, very few things pisses me off to the extent that this kind of behaviour does. (I can actually start sweating, merely thinking about this)
The idea of exploiting the starving seems to be good business for the Monsanto people.
This kind of behaviour - maximizing profits, disregard for human life, and the complete lack of any moral consideration, is, I believe, one of few that is taking us in a direction which ultimately will bring down the sad downfall (sudden, fiery death for the masses is still a threat) of humanity.
To me, the people who profit from selling these "Terminated seeds" (I here refrain from spilling my thoughts too bluntly, especially avoiding a sentence containing a suggested use of the words "Monsanto executives" and "terminate") to starving people, occupy a niche lower in the food chain than people who murder the elderly for money, and those who sell women and children for sexual exploitation and their personal profit.
Please, even if you disagree with my views, let at least the facts about this be known.
Just having access to the files on the machine wouldn't be enough.
Real operating systems treat devices just like files, and I do believe Microsoft has something similar to this in their products.
How on earth does this "protect users"?
You are using the word "protect" in the old, unfashionable sense.
The new meaning (popularized by the true cancer of the Earth - human greed, incarnate here in the ever growing metastasis of megacorporations, always looking for more resources to eat into and exploit, eventually killing the host organism in the process), the new meaning of the word "Protect", is, of course, no secret here, "To hinder from, to restrict". Just as in the good old meaning of the more politically neutral and widely used "Write protection", remember? Except here we get the doubtful honour of getting restricted from ourselves, yes, and by the very entities we trust our money too (trust seems very unilateral when buying media these days).
Also in this brave, new vocabulary: "Secure", which of course is "from the tamperings of the lawful owner of this device".
I'll not be surprised to hear that he receives either probation or a suspended sentance.
Suspended sentance. Suspended sentance!
They went free that very day! I stood in the courtroom like a fool.
And those two bastards, they smiled at me.
Then I said to my wife, 'for justice, we must go to Don Corleone.
[...] and one of the ways you can reduce the risks of getting unwanted software on your machine is to only accept digitally signed software from vendors that you trust.
This is true. However, the keyword is "trust".
I would never trust a company that has been lying, tricking and deceiving their customers practically from day one. I would never recommend anyone to deal with a software company that deliberately coded their products to break when used with a competitors.
Lying, deceiving, locking-in their customers for reasons of pure greed only.
Microsoft, who are you to speak of trust?
Nope.
When I pay for a overpriced CD, I at least deserve the right to be able listen to it in any (preferably open) format of my own choosing.
Yes, it will.
Sounds like a version of 28 Days Later based on Mars to me."
It's already done, and called "Ghosts of Mars".
And it came the year before "28 days later".
Don't buy any services or products advertised in popups, or other "annoying" media.
Duh!
How about a popup window that notifies the user that something tried to install software, or run a signed applet (with more privileges) on the computer - and that this functionality is disabled by default in the browser until the user explicitly sets an option to enable it.
:^) I was visiting
Yesterday, for the first time, I was warned by Firefox that the site (don't ask
1) tried to install software and
2) Wanted to run a signed applet (with a seemingly fake cert from "Thawte consulting").
To protect the "clueless user", installing software should by default require some more actions by a user than a single click.
Guard #1: There's a problem in block 47.
Guard #2: The rapists and child molesters again?
Guard #1: Yep, they have started beating and selling the spammers for sexual services.
Guard #2: So, what's the problem?
Guard #1: There arent' enough of the former group.
Guard #2: Aah, let's transfer some from block #19 to even out the numbers.
A bunch of people helping each other to survive is a product of natural selection, not its absence.
This made me nod and smile a bit - yes, indeed, a society that collectively cares for the weaker individuals and has a redistribution system of money (work) to accomodate this, is one that evolutionary is superior to a society of selfish individual quests for power and wealth.
In couple of years we should be able to artificially enhance IQ in humans, so overall we should improve.
What means of enhancing intelligence do count as "artificial" - as opposed to "natural"? A special diet? Cunningly crafted vitamin supplies? Specially designed education tools and plans?
Or should the line between "artificial" and "natural" be drawn at deliberate genetic alterations?
This may be a good thing to consider, when talking "ethics".
Well, maybe some sane country like Norway or Canada,
:)
And just how long would they remain "sane" when living with the status as "superpower"? How long before they too turned paranoid, or pissed off somebody and really got something to worry about?
Has there been studies on how even being targeted with nuclear weapoins for prolonged periods affects human psychology, and in the extent, foreign politics?
There was said something about how power corrupts.... Perhaps every state should have plans for how _not_ to grow too large or powerful. An international agreement to keep world domination in check. (No, a perpetual state of war isn't it.
Hear the rhyme of the ancient mariner,
See his eye as he downloads one of three
Mesmerises one of the Kazaa guests
Stay here and listen to the nightmares of MP3!
set the IE home page to goat.cx.
:)
Ditto for the icon, of course.
I seem to remember that iexplore.exe is just a wrapper around those DLLs that Internet Explorer actually consists of.
So, when accessing those functions from explorer.exe, it's the IE DLLs that are used - not the iexplorer.exe executable.
You closed down all those nuclear reactors already?
:)
No, thought so. While they are running - and producing about 20% of the electricity in the United States - if what I read is accurate - why not let those hot rods on the street be powered (indirectly) by those other hot rods..
So that electricity comes from power plants - in the US, that means mostly coal and oil.
Yes, but that can change, and electricity can be produced from alternatives, giving hydrogen fuel from "green" electricity.
Try doing something similar with oil-based fuel. Not as easy.
What I don't understand is how Microsoft would see one's MAC address provided that Ethernet is not routable...
The software running on the X-BOX should be able to read the MAC address of the card, and send it to anyone willing to have it (Microsoft).
If it isn't encrypted, it should be possible to detect packets containing it, and change the address in transit.
The maxim I always use is: The company that holds your account never needs to ask you for your password since they already have it.
Eh, unless they want to verify that you know the right password, which is what these kind of scams are giving the impression of - a complete login page.