I have never read a reputable article that shows organic to be any healthier for the consumer or the environment
Organics' not any healthier than conventional food? Face Off: Organic vs. Conventional. "Since 2001 more than 40 studies comparing the nutrient content of organic and conventional foods have been published. From those and some earlier studies, the Organic Center identified 236 scientifically-valid head-to-head match ups between an organic food and a conventional one. The nutrients included antioxidants (total phenolics, total antioxidant capacity, quercetin and kaempferol), three precursors of key vitamins (Vitamins A, C, and E), two minerals (potassium and phosphorous) and total protein."
Next, environment. So you haven't heard about estrogen mimics that mess with the reproduction of fish, alligators, and other wildlife?
Um, maybe not gather seeds from the parts of the fields that turned out significantly better than your normal techniques are capable of producing and that you as the farmer there damn well know it?
Significantly better in what way? The only thing Monsanto's Roundup Ready seeds are good for is being about to dump lots of Monsanto's Roundup on to crops. Roundup kills everything but the Roundup Ready crop. What if you don't use Roundup, and therefore don't buy the Roundup Ready seeds?
That's one of the things biotech companies use as a plus for genetic engineering, they don't need as many chemicals. However those like Roundup Ready are specifically made so farmers can use lots of chemicals.
Actually, not quite. If your fields get contaminated with Monsanto crops, they won't sue. If you sell the contaminated plants for money, they won't sue or demand royalties. They will only sue if you collect the seed and replant it. I don't think that's too unreasonable.
So farmers aren't supposed to do what farmers have done since agriculture started, save seed for the next planting?
I agree with some of what you say, however I have problems with some of it.
The Indian government has opened the market up to international trade, and these farmers can't be competitive. They're competing with Thai and Indonesian farmers who are two to three decades ahead of them in terms of technology, and whose families have been farming for ten generations.
They're also compeating with US farmers who get billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, as well as heavily subsidized Japanese and European farmers.
What does the Indian government propose? GM seeds! They dole them out by the tonne without explaining that they can't be reseeded (it's not illegal, it's just impossible: the crops can't be replanted).
Except they can be reseeded: "Goliath Whomps David'. And let's not forget biopiracy, the patenting of plants Indians and other South Asians have been growing for generations: The Basmati Rice case.
They can prevent farmers from violating a contract. Ok. So? A contract is an agreement. They can prevent farmers from doing what farmers agreed not to do.
And what if the farmer neither bought Monsanto's seed nor agreed to any contract? Cross pollination does occur, naturally. Farmer Percy Schmeiser never bought the seed yet Monsanto successfully sued him for growing Monsanto's patented canola. While I admit he went out of his way to get seeds other than the Roundup he sprayed it happened naturally.
Oh, and that Monsanto data I provided in the other response about cross pollination it said even if cross pollination happens the seed would be sterile, well if it was sterile how in the world was he able to grow a crop from the seeds?
That's quite interesting. If they stated this as part of their "sales pitch", then it would probably be a valid defense during a suit. If some of their less-reputable (or less-informed) managers said so while talking to someone who is not directly in charge of making a purchasing decisions, then they were just yapping.
I didn't spend much tyme but I found these:
"New Seed And Gene Protection Methods: Monsanto's Position
In the event of a successful cross-pollination between a biotech-improved plant with GP and a traditional plant, the seed produced by the out-crossed plant would be sterile. The environmental impact of such a cross-pollination would therefore be extremely limited and temporary one generation of the individual seeds cross-pollinated.
t is very likely that only the neighbor can be sued... because his contract with the company absolves the company of any responsibility for such an event.
I don't know about you but I love gardening and I've never ever been made to sign a contract when I purchased seeds. And unlike Microsoft software, there's no end user license or agreement on the packaging saying they are no longer liable.
They sold the seeds to your neighbor. So they don't own the seeds
Except they do own the seeds. If they did not own the seeds then they can't prevent the owner from saving seeds, which farmers have done since agriculture has started, and plant those seeds the next planting season.
The key word is "do". They didn't do anything to make the seeds blow to your yard. I am not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure you can't sue someone for something they didn't do and which didn't involve their property (the seeds at that point are no longer Monsato's). Growing the seeds (even if inadvertantly) is tentamount (at least in theory) to allowing theft to happen on your property.
In other words Monsanto gets to own the world. Fact is Monsanto publicly stated their GE seed can't cross pollinate when in fact it does.
The point of my previous post was: If you use "open source" products, you can do whatever the hell you want and live free from corporate dictatorship. However if you use "copyrighted" or trademarked products, then you have to be complying with your chosen corporations' rules and restrictions. ----- It's a choice, and each has pros & cons. Welcome to the "real world".
Except in nature it doesn't work that way. If I have an organic farm, organic certification bans genetic engineering, but a farmer down the highway uses Monsanto's GE Roundup Ready seeds, my crop can become contaminated by the Roundup Ready crop.
So, let me explain why many people consider this a bug. Suppose you open GIMP and have 10 tool windows open. To alt-tab back to some other application you must now hit alt-tab 10 times. So GIMP has changed the expected behavior of alt-tab on a system-wide level. Most applicatiosn create a single top-level window and place their tool windows s children of that. So alt-tab switches "applications" or "open documents" not "all open tool windows/dialogs/child windows." Generally ctrl-tab, or ctrl-left/right (on Macs it is ctrl-brackets or alt-apostrophe, depending).
Maybe it's the OS being used? On my Mac I apple-tab to cycle through different apps and to cycle through different windows in the same app I ctrl-tab.
And then there are dual-monitor systems. This is where Photoshop really starts to be annoying, unless there is some way I don't know of to detach the tools (probably is) -- it's possible to put the image itself, completely maximized, on one monitor, and all of the tools on another monitor.
Photographers do this all the tyme, the photo they're editing is displayed on the large monitor right in front of them while they keep the tool pallets on a smaller monitor to the side.
Some might think he spent or invested his money locally, but he may of actually sent a lot of money to relatives in Syria as remittances.
He, likely, does both. It would not worry me at all, if it weren't for the thought, that some of his money may end up helping people like Hezbollah or Hamas. Even if he does not send it to them, contributions to charities operating in the area lift the pressures off these terrorist organizations to provide their populace with services... Unfortunately, there is no way to dislodge an organization like those without real pain to the civilians, who vote for them and/or are controlled by them.
Maybe using a Syrian deli as an example wasn't such a good idea but that's what came to my mind first besides Mexicans. Maybe an Indian restaurant would of been better, or take all those Indians in the US on H1B visas. It's likely some if not many of them send money home to India.
I try to push these thoughts away, when I visit a local Syrian-owned grocery shop -- the owner is a fellow American after all
I didn't know whether they, a family ran it, were US citizens, residents wanting citizenship, or just residents. It didn't and doesn't matter to me, so long as a person does not harm or violate another's rights it doesn't matter where they live.
reason: I have a dual monitor setup and I want my picture to fill all of monitor 1 while my tools sit on monitor 2.
I know people who have dual monitor Mac setups that do just this in Photoshop, have the photo being edited open in a window on the large monitor and have the tool palettes open on a smaller monitor. People have been doing this for years, especially photographers.
macs and the software commonly associated with them tend to be more expensive than regular pcs
Have you priced Macs in the last few years? The price of them hold their own against Windows PCs now. Last year I switched from Windows to OSX, I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro. Before I got my Mac I compared it's price with the prices of OEM PCs with the same specs. I don't recall all of them but an HP configured close to my MBP was about the same price whereas the Dell was about $200 more. As for software prices, those companies that release both Mac and Windows versions sale them for the same price. Heck some even come in the same box. A few days ago I was in a big box store looking over graphics and photo editing software, and looking at the hardware requirements some of them listed both Windows and OSX requirements.
With the rate of advancement in The GIMP, eventually, Photoshop enthusiasts will have nothing bad to really say about it. It was always about no cmyk, no 32 bit color support, no adjustment layers. It looks like some of these things may be coming in future.
CinePaint aka Film Gimp has had 32 bit colour depths for a while. While it doesn't have cmyk support it's being worked on. From what I could find though it doesn't have adjustment layers either.
Oh, I wanted to share these graphics of Gimp and Photoshop being depicted as Swiss Arm Knives
Ultimately that's what the civil war was about, it wasn't about slavery.
Actually, it was all about slavery...
Only peripherally, the southern states ceded because they believed their states' rights were being violated.
Slavery was a topic that bedeviled the founding fathers even. Adams, Jefferson, others all admitted their deal with the devils to get through the day
Yea, when Thomas Jefferson first wrote the "Declaration of Independence" he wrote that everyone, including Blacks and women, had the same rights. However as slave owners and others who believed in slavery, and subservient women, had to sign the DOI he removed those parts.
a civil war on the issue was more or less inevitable, especially as the north began to figure out how to use machines to be more productive than the southern slave based economy.
Actually in part because of the efficiency of machinery and manufacturing slavery was doomed. Economically slavery was unsustainable, it costs less to pay willing employees a living wage than it does to keep slaves.
Ah yes, but filtering has always been the job of the media. I mean, is it censorship that DailyKos blocks right wing posts?
First, it's not the job of media to filter, it's the job of media to inform, news media that is. As for DailyKos, I've never been there and don't know if they in fact do block right wing posts. But if it does, which I disagree with, there are still plenty of other websites a person can go to. If however an ISP blocks or slows down traffic from DailyKos or Fox and the person has broadband there's not much choice for switching ISPs.
Your agreement doesn't say that they -can't-. And besides, if you don't like what your ISP gives you, you are more than free to start your own. There's plenty of room in the market for boutique ISPs...
It doesn't say they can either. And while it may be easy to start a dialup ISP starting a broadband service is different. Because of this I was hoping the FCC auction for the 700 MHz airwaves would open them up so it would be easy to start wireless broadband. Now we'll have to wait to see if it happens.
I thought the USSC already ruled New York didn't have the authority to force tribes to collect and pay the tobacco taxes. Googling it appears I was wrong.
Yeah but those poles can generally hold the weight of another cable no problem and if you offer the right incentives to a municipality they will generally agree to enter into a franchise agreement with you.
However some of the original agreements or contracts for phone or cable were exclusive for the service provided. The reasoning goes that no one would spend so much to string cables or lines if they couldn't have exclusive rights for some years. And some things can't use those poles. For instance fiber to the curb needs the fiber to be buried which costs more than stringing cables on poles.
Spreading the investment like you suggested makes a lot of sense rather than blindly investing in stocks.
An investor should have an investment strategy based on part on their age, someone young should invest for growth. While the risks are a little higher they still have plenty of tyme to make up for loses whereas someone nearing retirement should shift to investments producing income, which have less risk. It sometimes amazes me many people though don't understand this as I learned it in jr high and high school, in public schools. Then again I had to explain this to my sister, who's 3 years younger than I am, when she was in college majoring in accounting.
Well, maybe in their imaginations. But that "libertarian" was hustling for exactly that kind of rigged market. Which is the only kind of market I've ever seen any "actual" libertarian hustle for in reality.
I, and others, have posted a number of tymes about opening up the airwaves. I and other libertarians are against ALL government granted monopolies. As for other libertarians, read some of the posts in the Libertarian Party's forums on monopolies some tyme. Nobody who supports monopolies can be considered a libertarian. How about this:
"Abstract: We hereby clarify the radical libertarian stance about Microsoft and government, and more generally about monopolies. We explain how the original evil behind Microsoft's monopoly is government intervention in the form of intellectual property privileges, and how any solution should begin by abolishing these privileges."
Slashdot Mirror
I have never read a reputable article that shows organic to be any healthier for the consumer or the environment
Organics' not any healthier than conventional food? Face Off: Organic vs. Conventional. "Since 2001 more than 40 studies comparing the nutrient content of organic and conventional foods have been published. From those and some earlier studies, the Organic Center identified 236 scientifically-valid head-to-head match ups between an organic food and a conventional one. The nutrients included antioxidants (total phenolics, total antioxidant capacity, quercetin and kaempferol), three precursors of key vitamins (Vitamins A, C, and E), two minerals (potassium and phosphorous) and total protein."
Next, environment. So you haven't heard about estrogen mimics that mess with the reproduction of fish, alligators, and other wildlife?
FalconUm, maybe not gather seeds from the parts of the fields that turned out significantly better than your normal techniques are capable of producing and that you as the farmer there damn well know it?
Significantly better in what way? The only thing Monsanto's Roundup Ready seeds are good for is being about to dump lots of Monsanto's Roundup on to crops. Roundup kills everything but the Roundup Ready crop. What if you don't use Roundup, and therefore don't buy the Roundup Ready seeds?
That's one of the things biotech companies use as a plus for genetic engineering, they don't need as many chemicals. However those like Roundup Ready are specifically made so farmers can use lots of chemicals.
FalconActually, not quite. If your fields get contaminated with Monsanto crops, they won't sue. If you sell the contaminated plants for money, they won't sue or demand royalties. They will only sue if you collect the seed and replant it. I don't think that's too unreasonable.
So farmers aren't supposed to do what farmers have done since agriculture started, save seed for the next planting?
FalconI agree with some of what you say, however I have problems with some of it.
The Indian government has opened the market up to international trade, and these farmers can't be competitive. They're competing with Thai and Indonesian farmers who are two to three decades ahead of them in terms of technology, and whose families have been farming for ten generations.
They're also compeating with US farmers who get billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, as well as heavily subsidized Japanese and European farmers.
What does the Indian government propose? GM seeds! They dole them out by the tonne without explaining that they can't be reseeded (it's not illegal, it's just impossible: the crops can't be replanted).
Except they can be reseeded: "Goliath Whomps David'. And let's not forget biopiracy, the patenting of plants Indians and other South Asians have been growing for generations: The Basmati Rice case.
FalconThey can prevent farmers from violating a contract. Ok. So? A contract is an agreement. They can prevent farmers from doing what farmers agreed not to do.
And what if the farmer neither bought Monsanto's seed nor agreed to any contract? Cross pollination does occur, naturally. Farmer Percy Schmeiser never bought the seed yet Monsanto successfully sued him for growing Monsanto's patented canola. While I admit he went out of his way to get seeds other than the Roundup he sprayed it happened naturally.
Oh, and that Monsanto data I provided in the other response about cross pollination it said even if cross pollination happens the seed would be sterile, well if it was sterile how in the world was he able to grow a crop from the seeds?
FalconThat's quite interesting. If they stated this as part of their "sales pitch", then it would probably be a valid defense during a suit. If some of their less-reputable (or less-informed) managers said so while talking to someone who is not directly in charge of making a purchasing decisions, then they were just yapping.
I didn't spend much tyme but I found these:
"New Seed And Gene Protection Methods: Monsanto's Position
In the event of a successful cross-pollination between a biotech-improved plant with GP and a traditional plant, the seed produced by the out-crossed plant would be sterile. The environmental impact of such a cross-pollination would therefore be extremely limited and temporary one generation of the individual seeds cross-pollinated.
"Safety Assessment of Roundup Ready Soybean Event 40-3-2"[pdf]
Falcon"Cross-pollination is generally very low and various studies have shown it to be from 0.03 to 3.62% between adjacent rows"
t is very likely that only the neighbor can be sued... because his contract with the company absolves the company of any responsibility for such an event.
I don't know about you but I love gardening and I've never ever been made to sign a contract when I purchased seeds. And unlike Microsoft software, there's no end user license or agreement on the packaging saying they are no longer liable.
FalconThey sold the seeds to your neighbor. So they don't own the seeds
Except they do own the seeds. If they did not own the seeds then they can't prevent the owner from saving seeds, which farmers have done since agriculture has started, and plant those seeds the next planting season.
FalconThe key word is "do". They didn't do anything to make the seeds blow to your yard. I am not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure you can't sue someone for something they didn't do and which didn't involve their property (the seeds at that point are no longer Monsato's). Growing the seeds (even if inadvertantly) is tentamount (at least in theory) to allowing theft to happen on your property.
In other words Monsanto gets to own the world. Fact is Monsanto publicly stated their GE seed can't cross pollinate when in fact it does.
FalconThe point of my previous post was: If you use "open source" products, you can do whatever the hell you want and live free from corporate dictatorship. However if you use "copyrighted" or trademarked products, then you have to be complying with your chosen corporations' rules and restrictions. ----- It's a choice, and each has pros & cons. Welcome to the "real world".
Except in nature it doesn't work that way. If I have an organic farm, organic certification bans genetic engineering, but a farmer down the highway uses Monsanto's GE Roundup Ready seeds, my crop can become contaminated by the Roundup Ready crop.
FalconSo, let me explain why many people consider this a bug. Suppose you open GIMP and have 10 tool windows open. To alt-tab back to some other application you must now hit alt-tab 10 times. So GIMP has changed the expected behavior of alt-tab on a system-wide level. Most applicatiosn create a single top-level window and place their tool windows s children of that. So alt-tab switches "applications" or "open documents" not "all open tool windows/dialogs/child windows." Generally ctrl-tab, or ctrl-left/right (on Macs it is ctrl-brackets or alt-apostrophe, depending).
Maybe it's the OS being used? On my Mac I apple-tab to cycle through different apps and to cycle through different windows in the same app I ctrl-tab.
FalconAnd then there are dual-monitor systems. This is where Photoshop really starts to be annoying, unless there is some way I don't know of to detach the tools (probably is) -- it's possible to put the image itself, completely maximized, on one monitor, and all of the tools on another monitor.
Photographers do this all the tyme, the photo they're editing is displayed on the large monitor right in front of them while they keep the tool pallets on a smaller monitor to the side.
FalconSome might think he spent or invested his money locally, but he may of actually sent a lot of money to relatives in Syria as remittances.
He, likely, does both. It would not worry me at all, if it weren't for the thought, that some of his money may end up helping people like Hezbollah or Hamas. Even if he does not send it to them, contributions to charities operating in the area lift the pressures off these terrorist organizations to provide their populace with services... Unfortunately, there is no way to dislodge an organization like those without real pain to the civilians, who vote for them and/or are controlled by them.
Maybe using a Syrian deli as an example wasn't such a good idea but that's what came to my mind first besides Mexicans. Maybe an Indian restaurant would of been better, or take all those Indians in the US on H1B visas. It's likely some if not many of them send money home to India.
I try to push these thoughts away, when I visit a local Syrian-owned grocery shop -- the owner is a fellow American after all
I didn't know whether they, a family ran it, were US citizens, residents wanting citizenship, or just residents. It didn't and doesn't matter to me, so long as a person does not harm or violate another's rights it doesn't matter where they live.
Falconreason: I have a dual monitor setup and I want my picture to fill all of monitor 1 while my tools sit on monitor 2.
I know people who have dual monitor Mac setups that do just this in Photoshop, have the photo being edited open in a window on the large monitor and have the tool palettes open on a smaller monitor. People have been doing this for years, especially photographers.
Falconmacs and the software commonly associated with them tend to be more expensive than regular pcs
Have you priced Macs in the last few years? The price of them hold their own against Windows PCs now. Last year I switched from Windows to OSX, I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro. Before I got my Mac I compared it's price with the prices of OEM PCs with the same specs. I don't recall all of them but an HP configured close to my MBP was about the same price whereas the Dell was about $200 more. As for software prices, those companies that release both Mac and Windows versions sale them for the same price. Heck some even come in the same box. A few days ago I was in a big box store looking over graphics and photo editing software, and looking at the hardware requirements some of them listed both Windows and OSX requirements.
FalconThere's GimpShop for those who want a Photoshop like interface.
FalconWith the rate of advancement in The GIMP, eventually, Photoshop enthusiasts will have nothing bad to really say about it. It was always about no cmyk, no 32 bit color support, no adjustment layers. It looks like some of these things may be coming in future.
CinePaint aka Film Gimp has had 32 bit colour depths for a while. While it doesn't have cmyk support it's being worked on. From what I could find though it doesn't have adjustment layers either.
Oh, I wanted to share these graphics of Gimp and Photoshop being depicted as Swiss Arm Knives
. FalconUltimately that's what the civil war was about, it wasn't about slavery.
Actually, it was all about slavery...
Only peripherally, the southern states ceded because they believed their states' rights were being violated.
Slavery was a topic that bedeviled the founding fathers even. Adams, Jefferson, others all admitted their deal with the devils to get through the day
Yea, when Thomas Jefferson first wrote the "Declaration of Independence" he wrote that everyone, including Blacks and women, had the same rights. However as slave owners and others who believed in slavery, and subservient women, had to sign the DOI he removed those parts.
a civil war on the issue was more or less inevitable, especially as the north began to figure out how to use machines to be more productive than the southern slave based economy.
Actually in part because of the efficiency of machinery and manufacturing slavery was doomed. Economically slavery was unsustainable, it costs less to pay willing employees a living wage than it does to keep slaves.
FalconAh yes, but filtering has always been the job of the media. I mean, is it censorship that DailyKos blocks right wing posts?
First, it's not the job of media to filter, it's the job of media to inform, news media that is. As for DailyKos, I've never been there and don't know if they in fact do block right wing posts. But if it does, which I disagree with, there are still plenty of other websites a person can go to. If however an ISP blocks or slows down traffic from DailyKos or Fox and the person has broadband there's not much choice for switching ISPs.
FalconYour agreement doesn't say that they -can't-. And besides, if you don't like what your ISP gives you, you are more than free to start your own. There's plenty of room in the market for boutique ISPs...
It doesn't say they can either. And while it may be easy to start a dialup ISP starting a broadband service is different. Because of this I was hoping the FCC auction for the 700 MHz airwaves would open them up so it would be easy to start wireless broadband. Now we'll have to wait to see if it happens.
FalconThey're still trying. Its in court.
I thought the USSC already ruled New York didn't have the authority to force tribes to collect and pay the tobacco taxes. Googling it appears I was wrong.
FalconYeah but those poles can generally hold the weight of another cable no problem and if you offer the right incentives to a municipality they will generally agree to enter into a franchise agreement with you.
However some of the original agreements or contracts for phone or cable were exclusive for the service provided. The reasoning goes that no one would spend so much to string cables or lines if they couldn't have exclusive rights for some years. And some things can't use those poles. For instance fiber to the curb needs the fiber to be buried which costs more than stringing cables on poles.
FalconSpreading the investment like you suggested makes a lot of sense rather than blindly investing in stocks.
An investor should have an investment strategy based on part on their age, someone young should invest for growth. While the risks are a little higher they still have plenty of tyme to make up for loses whereas someone nearing retirement should shift to investments producing income, which have less risk. It sometimes amazes me many people though don't understand this as I learned it in jr high and high school, in public schools. Then again I had to explain this to my sister, who's 3 years younger than I am, when she was in college majoring in accounting.
FalconWell, maybe in their imaginations. But that "libertarian" was hustling for exactly that kind of rigged market. Which is the only kind of market I've ever seen any "actual" libertarian hustle for in reality.
I, and others, have posted a number of tymes about opening up the airwaves. I and other libertarians are against ALL government granted monopolies. As for other libertarians, read some of the posts in the Libertarian Party's forums on monopolies some tyme. Nobody who supports monopolies can be considered a libertarian. How about this:
"Abstract: We hereby clarify the radical libertarian stance about Microsoft and government, and more generally about monopolies. We explain how the original evil behind Microsoft's monopoly is government intervention in the form of intellectual property privileges, and how any solution should begin by abolishing these privileges."
Or "The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights ".
FalconWouldn't this be enough of an admission for the FCC to actually act now?
That's FCC's stance now, no net neutrality law is needed because the FCC can fine ISPs that violate neutrality.
Falcon