I would look into some open source CMSs. Traq is an excellent option. I like doing web based setups to help clients feel more involved in the process.
I am working on a site right now that uses Drupal 5.2 and a few modules for it such as Casetracker and CCK to build just such a site. You can add modules to incorporate almost any functionality such as email notifications, SMS, source code tracking, revisions. See for more info and a quick how to.
Sorry, I know this is getting off topic, but speaking of waste and such from Katrina, brought back to mind, this grill made from a log that I saw on another site.
This isn't exactly shocking for a county where our local Government, won't issue ID cards for those who have been prescribed medical marijuana. This county loves to be the uptight puritan neighbor to Los Angeles. The state says its okay, but the county is claiming that since the federal government says no, they can't risk getting sued. States rights? Ha. This county is known for its unbelievable government and law enforcement. Recently an inmate was killed in the county jail after the staff told other inmates that he was a suspected child predator. The Sheriffs department insists they did no wrong in this, and there pat answer is more or less, "Who cares, he was a child predator?" and "You can't listen to criminals to tell you the truth, they're people who do things that are wrong anyway." All local press fails to point out that he was never even convicted.
I don't mind a conservative government, and all, but here it's like being conservative just for the sake of being conservative, instead of any real reason behind the decisions of the local government. Law enforcement in Orange county seems to me, to serve mostly to harass the public, in hopes of catching some illegal immigrants along the way.
So yeah, this really isn't surprising.
P.S. In OC, if it had been a 30 y/o MILF in an SUV, she could have had the soap, had it tested positive for GHB, heck she probably could have had pure GHB and pot in the car, and still been able to drive off.
Back in the day if you were in a mailbox view or something that didn't support typing things in, and you started typing, it would beep with the system sound at each keystroke for the first 10 or so keystrokes, before popping up a dialog box that read "You can keep typing if you want to but no one is listening right now..." or something to that effect.
Now onto the later versions of it, they would just pop up a box that read "No window supporting user input is open" or something like that on the very first keypress. Stupid. With the old version I would usually realize what had happened before the dialog opened. With the new one I had to close that dialog with the first mistake, and it didn't try to humor me at the same time. I found that alone massively annoying, but things like that kept up in other parts of the program for while, and that in conjunction with the adware and my move to OS X prompted my move to Mail.app.
Maybe Eudora will get some of it's original personality back. I mean even the name has more personality than most other programs out there:
Couldn't the just release the source code to the big blue e? Wouldn't that be enough to garner them front page news stories all across the internet? Just imagine the press releases: "Microsoft works with open source community on icon!!!!"
I think your real question is not about why you can't convert music from DRM format to non-DRM format. Honestly the fact that DRM music exists is what makes the only online music purchase possible. Did you expect the recrod companies to publish the music in any other way in our changing world. I forsee a time when CDs are phased out, because they can be copied easier than DRM music downloaded from an online store. Originially CDs and albums weren't that easy to copy when they were first introduced.
I guess your real question is why isn't there an open standard for DRM? Beats me. I think it is ultimately very self defeating for companies to maintain closed standards.
I work in the field of live pro audio, and there standards are openly published and manufacturers readily adopt them because a) it is a selling point by itself and b)in that industry its widely assumed that your company doesn't make the best product of everything an end user needs. In other words, they know that you are going to be using ABCs product together with XYZs or Blah company's product. Therefore they must adopt open standards in order to even be a consideration.
I guess in the computer industry that attitude doesn't exist and everyone thinks that their product is the shit or whatever. Frankly that needs to change, and what its going to take to execute such a change, I do not know.
Just thought I'd throw this out there and see what ya'll thought of them. Obviously very biased towards one side of the arguement, but I've been fairly impressed by some of their work that I've run across.
They only made a drug that made the user suicidal, marketed the drug to usually depressed teenagers, hid the fact when they knew, they wouldn't admit it when all the evidence pointed to it, and they wouldn't put the warning on the drug in all countries when some places forced them to admit the problem.
This is after they hid the fact that it caused hideous birth defect in pregnant women and were forced to admit that after the drug went on the open market.
I had visions, I was in them,
I was looking into the mirror
To see a little bit clearer
The rottenness and evil in me Anyone who gives away music
Fingertips have memories,
Mine can't forget the curves of your body
And when I feel a bit naughty You're not supposed to give away your music!
I run it up the flagpole and see who salutes Apparently slashdot does!
(But no one ever does)
I'm not sick, but I'm not well
and I'm so hot 'cause I'm in hell
Been around the world and found
That only stupid people are breeding
The cretins cloning and feeding
And I don't even own a TV See, they're anti media from the beginning!!
Put me in the hospital for nerves
And then they had to commit me
You told them all I was crazy The record companies want you to think that a band that gives away its music must be crazy!
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee, Goddamn you
I'm not sick, but I'm not well
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell
I'm not sick, but I'm not well
And it's a sin to live so well
I wanna publish 'zines
And rage against machines They're totally anit-establishment!
I wanna pierce my tongue
It doesn't hurt, it feels fine
The trivial sublime
I'd like to turn off time
And kill my mind
You kill my mind
Mind...
Paranoia, paranoia
Everybody's comin' to get me Run! they knew the RIAA was coming
Just say you never met me
I'm runnin' underground with the moles Underground music distribution?
Diggin' in holes
Hear the voices in my head
I swear to God it sounds like they're snoring
But if you're bored then you're boring
The agony and the irony, they're killing me, whoa!
I'm not sick, but I'm not well
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell
I'm not sick, but I'm not well
And it's a sin to live this well
For real though, as an audio professional. They really need to learn how to attach this thing to a guitar without killing its tone, or learn how to mic a guitar with reasonable success.
Also, they now have years ahead of them working on listening and anlyzing waveforms and high speed film captures of real guitarists trying to model the subtle nuances that make a good performance. I'm not saying it can't be done, there are ways to get simply amazing piano sounds out of a computer these days. Think GigaSampler and random timing generators.
Really though this will have real potential once they make a guitar that could be played and it's players movements translated into data used to play back another guitar. Then a sound engineer could spend all day preparing mics and trying different guitar amps with the machine playing the guitar instead of a person. This is already a somewhat common practice with Yamaha Disklavier pianos.
When I was in high school, the updated the macs to foolproof after I proved the uselessness of At Ease (debug window, "G finder")
The worst part, was that when Foolproof was installed, the campus wide hotkey to disable security was: Shift-K
SHIFT-K!!
Took about 3 hours to be widely known, and 2 years later when I left it was still there.
You couldn't even type a K on those machine without the caps lock...sigh. And I regularly got in trouble for exposing stuff like that, or for example the science/biology teacher that had his whole hard drive shared (grade files and tests) with no password.
Actually in some areas where hunting has been restricted, populations of some animals have exploded to the point where hunting them isn't a challenge anymore.
Most of my friends from Ohio, where I grew up, no longer hunt with rifles anymore, but have since changed to bow hunting, due to the sheer number of deer everytime you turn around. Also, they truly enjoy the act of the hunt, and bow hunting season is open longer. These guys will frequently get up in the middle of the night, and go sit in a 2' by 2' chair strapped to a tree 15 feet in the air for 5 or 6 hours, waiting for daylight, not moving, not making any noise, and masking their scents. I'd say the challenge is still there in this type of hunting.
Of course the other altenrnative is hunting with your car. The area I lived in Ohio, we would experience anywhere from 1-5 accidents per year involving people sent to the hospital from hitting dear, within a 1 mile section of highway that I lived on.
During one fall, 4 of my fellow classmates totalled their cars from hitting dear, out of my graduating class of 60. This was about 6 years ago. I've only hit deer twice while driving a commercial truck, so I've always fared well (and no, not on purpose).
Think twice before defending the innocence, of the poor deer or other animals, who we are about to wipe from existence.
In the case cited in the article it is not a question of whether or not they were journalists and thereby covered by shield laws. It is a matter of releasing trade secrets which could damage a company, which is not covered by shield laws.
Everyone does have the same right to say the same thing no matter what their profession, within laws that supersede the first amendment, such as trade secret protection laws.
It doesn't matter who you are, or what you are doing if it's against the relevant law, it's against the law.
The security of the Rock and Roll hall of Shame has been telling people to cease and desist, and confiscating cameras anytime someone comes within their sight, using anything nicer than a bottom of the line SLR, a tripod, or taking photos for more than a minute. The reasons I've heard for this, but not been able to verify is that the photographer who took the official photos used on postcards and promotional literature, was very upset that he may be losing royalties. This has been going on for years.
I think the real reason they don't want people taking omre photos of it, is because the place was absolutely freaking filthy the last time I was anywear nere it. Literally. The white part, and glass ressmbled respective parts of a similarly colored car that had survived between 1 and 10 Cleveland winters without being washed. Just another reason among dozens of others for the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Shame moniker.
It took me a little over a day and half here for me to realize that it was in fact the same hotel, and furthermore, that the lobby was virtually unchanged. The only major change is the removal of all the suspended walkways, and the addition of a ground supported walkway between the second floor levels on opposite sides of the atrium. The walkways actually were quite functional, as the third floor was the only way to connect from guest rooms to the ballroom level, or the healthclub level. Now one has to go down to the lobby or second floor, to cross and go back up to the level you need.
No one else seems to notice, and lots of people take pictures of the (IMHO rather ugly) art that now decorates the lobby. There is no mention of it anywhere. I actually had to look up pictures on the internet to realize that virtually nothing had changed.
I grew up on a farm and understand the why this is a problem very well.
Farmers buy seed that is basically very expensive crops harvested and cleaned and separated and tested and treated, that helps it's performance. I.e smashed seends don't grow well, seeds with mold on them don't grow well, seeds that insects eat don't grow well. This is why proportionately seed is much more expensive than feed, which is what most of the crops grown in this country are used for.
Feed usually does contain seeds, just not well protected or near the quality of commercial seed. Growing up, every year my father would always set aside a portion of the harvest to be cleaned and used as seed the next year, if for some reason commercial seed were not available. This is done mainly with wheat and soybeans, due to the population planting issues, and germ rates (wheat and soybeans are planted with a expoentially greater seed/acre density than corn is for example).
Every year, my father would send samples of each vareity from the crop that he saved off to a lab for testing. Information returned would include percent foreign matter (such as weed seeds and hulls) and the most important was the germ rate, which is basically a percentage of how many of the seeds from the sample sprouted when provided warmth, water and nutrients. In other words how many of the seeds are duds.
We could never harvest a crop or clean our saved seed enough to get germ rates within 10% of commercial seed. The equipment we used to harvest it, and our storage methods just weren't as good. Every year that I can remember, after we bought commercial seed, and had planted it, and had a crop come up, we sold the grain we had saved for seed from the previous crop.
That's basically the how and why of why saving seed vs. buying commercial seed. We never were able to determine that we would save enough money by using our own, to make it worth while. Now, for some additional issues related to GMOs (Genetically modified organisms).
These commercial seeds that are GMOs obviously bear a price premium, and what company would want to give that up? I see this as the biggest driving force behind the contracts, licensing and lawsuits. Secondly, Monsanto obviously can't put any kind of guarantee of performance on recycled seed, and most likely wishes to avoid tarnishing their product's reputation. Thirdly, and this I don't really know enough about, but is one reason that they give, is that the original seed is bred in such a way that it's crop produces optimal seed to be resistant to the proper compounds and the possibility that subsequent generations could stray from that original organisms exist. (I just don't know about this, but it sounds plausible enough)
Ironically back on our family farm, we have had mixed success with GMOs. We continue to use traditional methods on about half our crops every year. What happens when everything becomes RoundUp Ready? When volunteer corn starts growing in a bean field, but spraying the beans with roundup doesn't kill it, because last years corn crop was round-up ready? This is why we continue to choose the seed with the location it will be planted in mind, so that we can use our chemicals of choice on it, to control the problems that we know are there. We also use wide varieties of seed from a wide variety of seed suppliers to increase resistance to single variety problems. Sometimes I really don't know how my father keeps this all straight on our mid size farm.
Do we ever plant RoundUp ready crop again as seed the next year? NO. Do we save some each year, as a precaution for things we can't even imagine (shortages, catastrophes, WWIII, etc.)? YES. Hopefully we never ever have to use it. Afterall it really doesn't make that great of seed compared to what is commercially available.
That's not that big of a deal, we all know that Clifford Stoll started his famous chase after a mere 75 cent discrepency in the accounting system of Lawrence Berkley Laboratories.
Slashdot Mirror
I would look into some open source CMSs. Traq is an excellent option. I like doing web based setups to help clients feel more involved in the process.
I am working on a site right now that uses Drupal 5.2 and a few modules for it such as Casetracker and CCK to build just such a site. You can add modules to incorporate almost any functionality such as email notifications, SMS, source code tracking, revisions. See for more info and a quick how to.
Sorry, I know this is getting off topic, but speaking of waste and such from Katrina, brought back to mind, this grill made from a log that I saw on another site.
1 /16385/0///200/#msg_144661
http://srforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/m/14466
This isn't exactly shocking for a county where our local Government, won't issue ID cards for those who have been prescribed medical marijuana. This county loves to be the uptight puritan neighbor to Los Angeles. The state says its okay, but the county is claiming that since the federal government says no, they can't risk getting sued. States rights? Ha. This county is known for its unbelievable government and law enforcement. Recently an inmate was killed in the county jail after the staff told other inmates that he was a suspected child predator. The Sheriffs department insists they did no wrong in this, and there pat answer is more or less, "Who cares, he was a child predator?" and "You can't listen to criminals to tell you the truth, they're people who do things that are wrong anyway." All local press fails to point out that he was never even convicted.
I don't mind a conservative government, and all, but here it's like being conservative just for the sake of being conservative, instead of any real reason behind the decisions of the local government. Law enforcement in Orange county seems to me, to serve mostly to harass the public, in hopes of catching some illegal immigrants along the way.
So yeah, this really isn't surprising.
P.S. In OC, if it had been a 30 y/o MILF in an SUV, she could have had the soap, had it tested positive for GHB, heck she probably could have had pure GHB and pot in the car, and still been able to drive off.
Back in the day if you were in a mailbox view or something that didn't support typing things in, and you started typing, it would beep with the system sound at each keystroke for the first 10 or so keystrokes, before popping up a dialog box that read "You can keep typing if you want to but no one is listening right now..." or something to that effect.
Now onto the later versions of it, they would just pop up a box that read "No window supporting user input is open" or something like that on the very first keypress. Stupid. With the old version I would usually realize what had happened before the dialog opened. With the new one I had to close that dialog with the first mistake, and it didn't try to humor me at the same time. I found that alone massively annoying, but things like that kept up in other parts of the program for while, and that in conjunction with the adware and my move to OS X prompted my move to Mail.app.
Maybe Eudora will get some of it's original personality back. I mean even the name has more personality than most other programs out there:
Why I Live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty
-Mikey P
What about Porsche AG, BMW AG, Daimler-Benz AG, Ferrari. Volkswagen Group, Maserati and others?
Anyone know what the California Attorney General drives?
No wireless? Less space than a??
Seriously with no wireless why would I want this over a Nokia 770? Other than the storage for portable use...
-Mikey P
Couldn't the just release the source code to the big blue e? Wouldn't that be enough to garner them front page news stories all across the internet? Just imagine the press releases: "Microsoft works with open source community on icon!!!!"
-Mikey P
I think your real question is not about why you can't convert music from DRM format to non-DRM format. Honestly the fact that DRM music exists is what makes the only online music purchase possible. Did you expect the recrod companies to publish the music in any other way in our changing world. I forsee a time when CDs are phased out, because they can be copied easier than DRM music downloaded from an online store. Originially CDs and albums weren't that easy to copy when they were first introduced.
I guess your real question is why isn't there an open standard for DRM? Beats me. I think it is ultimately very self defeating for companies to maintain closed standards.
I work in the field of live pro audio, and there standards are openly published and manufacturers readily adopt them because a) it is a selling point by itself and b)in that industry its widely assumed that your company doesn't make the best product of everything an end user needs. In other words, they know that you are going to be using ABCs product together with XYZs or Blah company's product. Therefore they must adopt open standards in order to even be a consideration.
I guess in the computer industry that attitude doesn't exist and everyone thinks that their product is the shit or whatever. Frankly that needs to change, and what its going to take to execute such a change, I do not know.
-Mikey P
Just thought I'd throw this out there and see what ya'll thought of them. Obviously very biased towards one side of the arguement, but I've been fairly impressed by some of their work that I've run across.
Articles/Topics from the Insitute for Creation Research
Here's one fairly good example I saw: Radioisotope Dating of Radioisotope Dating of Grand Canyon Rocks: Another Devastating Failure for Long-Age Geology (#376)
-Mikey P
They only made a drug that made the user suicidal, marketed the drug to usually depressed teenagers, hid the fact when they knew, they wouldn't admit it when all the evidence pointed to it, and they wouldn't put the warning on the drug in all countries when some places forced them to admit the problem.
This is after they hid the fact that it caused hideous birth defect in pregnant women and were forced to admit that after the drug went on the open market.
Accutane
Accutane Action Group
-Mikey P
I had visions, I was in them,
I was looking into the mirror
To see a little bit clearer
The rottenness and evil in me Anyone who gives away music
Fingertips have memories,
Mine can't forget the curves of your body
And when I feel a bit naughty You're not supposed to give away your music!
I run it up the flagpole and see who salutes Apparently slashdot does!
(But no one ever does)
I'm not sick, but I'm not well
and I'm so hot 'cause I'm in hell
Been around the world and found
That only stupid people are breeding
The cretins cloning and feeding
And I don't even own a TV See, they're anti media from the beginning!!
Put me in the hospital for nerves
And then they had to commit me
You told them all I was crazy The record companies want you to think that a band that gives away its music must be crazy!
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee, Goddamn you
I'm not sick, but I'm not well
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell
I'm not sick, but I'm not well
And it's a sin to live so well
I wanna publish 'zines
And rage against machines They're totally anit-establishment!
I wanna pierce my tongue
It doesn't hurt, it feels fine
The trivial sublime
I'd like to turn off time
And kill my mind
You kill my mind
Mind...
Paranoia, paranoia
Everybody's comin' to get me Run! they knew the RIAA was coming
Just say you never met me
I'm runnin' underground with the moles Underground music distribution?
Diggin' in holes
Hear the voices in my head
I swear to God it sounds like they're snoring
But if you're bored then you're boring
The agony and the irony, they're killing me, whoa!
I'm not sick, but I'm not well
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell
I'm not sick, but I'm not well
And it's a sin to live this well
-Mikey P
For real though, as an audio professional. They really need to learn how to attach this thing to a guitar without killing its tone, or learn how to mic a guitar with reasonable success.
Also, they now have years ahead of them working on listening and anlyzing waveforms and high speed film captures of real guitarists trying to model the subtle nuances that make a good performance. I'm not saying it can't be done, there are ways to get simply amazing piano sounds out of a computer these days. Think GigaSampler and random timing generators.
I guess its called GigaStudio now
Really though this will have real potential once they make a guitar that could be played and it's players movements translated into data used to play back another guitar. Then a sound engineer could spend all day preparing mics and trying different guitar amps with the machine playing the guitar instead of a person. This is already a somewhat common practice with Yamaha Disklavier pianos.
Yamaha Disklavier page
-Mikey P
When I was in high school, the updated the macs to foolproof after I proved the uselessness of At Ease (debug window, "G finder")
The worst part, was that when Foolproof was installed, the campus wide hotkey to disable security was: Shift-K
SHIFT-K!!
Took about 3 hours to be widely known, and 2 years later when I left it was still there.
You couldn't even type a K on those machine without the caps lock...sigh. And I regularly got in trouble for exposing stuff like that, or for example the science/biology teacher that had his whole hard drive shared (grade files and tests) with no password.
-Mikey P
That's right only 1,860 km^2 folks.
A little under half the size of Rhode Island.
Step right up and learn more!
-Mikey P
Brilliant solution, and an excellent example of the wide range and advanced nature of many Amateur technologies.
One problem....
He's running a business, and well that's not really amateur than is it? What you are proposing is actually illegal.
Please see part 97 of the FCC rules, specifically section 113, 'Prohibited transmissions'
FCC rules 97.113
-Mikey P
Neat!!!11111!!!111!!!!oneoneoneone!!!!111!
Montana's speed limit for autos during the day was "Reasonable and Prudent"
Info and definition of reasonable and prudent
Of course no one wanted to drive there anymore, cause honestly, who wants to be a prude?
And that's why they had to change it, due to lack of drivers
-Mikey P
Actually in some areas where hunting has been restricted, populations of some animals have exploded to the point where hunting them isn't a challenge anymore.
Most of my friends from Ohio, where I grew up, no longer hunt with rifles anymore, but have since changed to bow hunting, due to the sheer number of deer everytime you turn around. Also, they truly enjoy the act of the hunt, and bow hunting season is open longer. These guys will frequently get up in the middle of the night, and go sit in a 2' by 2' chair strapped to a tree 15 feet in the air for 5 or 6 hours, waiting for daylight, not moving, not making any noise, and masking their scents. I'd say the challenge is still there in this type of hunting.
Of course the other altenrnative is hunting with your car. The area I lived in Ohio, we would experience anywhere from 1-5 accidents per year involving people sent to the hospital from hitting dear, within a 1 mile section of highway that I lived on.
During one fall, 4 of my fellow classmates totalled their cars from hitting dear, out of my graduating class of 60. This was about 6 years ago. I've only hit deer twice while driving a commercial truck, so I've always fared well (and no, not on purpose).
Think twice before defending the innocence, of the poor deer or other animals, who we are about to wipe from existence.
-Mikey P
It doesn't matter!!
In the case cited in the article it is not a question of whether or not they were journalists and thereby covered by shield laws. It is a matter of releasing trade secrets which could damage a company, which is not covered by shield laws.
Everyone does have the same right to say the same thing no matter what their profession, within laws that supersede the first amendment, such as trade secret protection laws.
It doesn't matter who you are, or what you are doing if it's against the relevant law, it's against the law.
-Mikey P
A link to this article will come up under news results!
results
Sounds like a really evil company to me!
-Mikey P
The security of the Rock and Roll hall of Shame has been telling people to cease and desist, and confiscating cameras anytime someone comes within their sight, using anything nicer than a bottom of the line SLR, a tripod, or taking photos for more than a minute. The reasons I've heard for this, but not been able to verify is that the photographer who took the official photos used on postcards and promotional literature, was very upset that he may be losing royalties. This has been going on for years.
I think the real reason they don't want people taking omre photos of it, is because the place was absolutely freaking filthy the last time I was anywear nere it. Literally. The white part, and glass ressmbled respective parts of a similarly colored car that had survived between 1 and 10 Cleveland winters without being washed. Just another reason among dozens of others for the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Shame moniker.
-Mikey P
At this moment I'm staying in a hotel where that is exactly what happened.
It took me a little over a day and half here for me to realize that it was in fact the same hotel, and furthermore, that the lobby was virtually unchanged. The only major change is the removal of all the suspended walkways, and the addition of a ground supported walkway between the second floor levels on opposite sides of the atrium. The walkways actually were quite functional, as the third floor was the only way to connect from guest rooms to the ballroom level, or the healthclub level. Now one has to go down to the lobby or second floor, to cross and go back up to the level you need.
No one else seems to notice, and lots of people take pictures of the (IMHO rather ugly) art that now decorates the lobby. There is no mention of it anywhere. I actually had to look up pictures on the internet to realize that virtually nothing had changed.
-Mikey P
I grew up on a farm and understand the why this is a problem very well.
Farmers buy seed that is basically very expensive crops harvested and cleaned and separated and tested and treated, that helps it's performance. I.e smashed seends don't grow well, seeds with mold on them don't grow well, seeds that insects eat don't grow well. This is why proportionately seed is much more expensive than feed, which is what most of the crops grown in this country are used for.
Feed usually does contain seeds, just not well protected or near the quality of commercial seed. Growing up, every year my father would always set aside a portion of the harvest to be cleaned and used as seed the next year, if for some reason commercial seed were not available. This is done mainly with wheat and soybeans, due to the population planting issues, and germ rates (wheat and soybeans are planted with a expoentially greater seed/acre density than corn is for example).
Every year, my father would send samples of each vareity from the crop that he saved off to a lab for testing. Information returned would include percent foreign matter (such as weed seeds and hulls) and the most important was the germ rate, which is basically a percentage of how many of the seeds from the sample sprouted when provided warmth, water and nutrients. In other words how many of the seeds are duds.
We could never harvest a crop or clean our saved seed enough to get germ rates within 10% of commercial seed. The equipment we used to harvest it, and our storage methods just weren't as good. Every year that I can remember, after we bought commercial seed, and had planted it, and had a crop come up, we sold the grain we had saved for seed from the previous crop.
That's basically the how and why of why saving seed vs. buying commercial seed. We never were able to determine that we would save enough money by using our own, to make it worth while. Now, for some additional issues related to GMOs (Genetically modified organisms).
These commercial seeds that are GMOs obviously bear a price premium, and what company would want to give that up? I see this as the biggest driving force behind the contracts, licensing and lawsuits. Secondly, Monsanto obviously can't put any kind of guarantee of performance on recycled seed, and most likely wishes to avoid tarnishing their product's reputation. Thirdly, and this I don't really know enough about, but is one reason that they give, is that the original seed is bred in such a way that it's crop produces optimal seed to be resistant to the proper compounds and the possibility that subsequent generations could stray from that original organisms exist. (I just don't know about this, but it sounds plausible enough)
Ironically back on our family farm, we have had mixed success with GMOs. We continue to use traditional methods on about half our crops every year. What happens when everything becomes RoundUp Ready? When volunteer corn starts growing in a bean field, but spraying the beans with roundup doesn't kill it, because last years corn crop was round-up ready? This is why we continue to choose the seed with the location it will be planted in mind, so that we can use our chemicals of choice on it, to control the problems that we know are there. We also use wide varieties of seed from a wide variety of seed suppliers to increase resistance to single variety problems. Sometimes I really don't know how my father keeps this all straight on our mid size farm.
Do we ever plant RoundUp ready crop again as seed the next year? NO. Do we save some each year, as a precaution for things we can't even imagine (shortages, catastrophes, WWIII, etc.)? YES. Hopefully we never ever have to use it. Afterall it really doesn't make that great of seed compared to what is commercially available.
Comments? Questions? please!
-Mikey P
So now, in the course of an hour, the whole city will know that I'm looking at internet pr0n...
That's not that big of a deal, we all know that Clifford Stoll started his famous chase after a mere 75 cent discrepency in the accounting system of Lawrence Berkley Laboratories.
-Mikey P