Only by default, there are two other settings, one of which will let you install anything unsigned. And it isn't clear the other two settings will stop a drive by.
No it isn't a stupid comparison. Most people decide between the two depending on the software, not the hardware whose specs escape most of the buying public.
There stock price isn't not high by price/earnings. Their price is only high to you because you see the price per stock. If they would split that stock, they'd have a more normal price, but then everybody and their brothers dog (not, of course, the totally techno-twits on Slashdot who wouldn't be caught dead using an iProduct) would attempt to buy Apple stock and then the P/E really would get out of whack.
Is there a way to get a columns file view in MS file explorer thingy? I don't mean where the additional columns are attributes, I mean where the additional columns show you the next level down in the folder hierarchy from a selected folder in the left most view.
I use Macs most of the time but periodically have to use a Windows 7 box. I find their file explorer thing irritating and am tired of clicking my way up and down a hierarchy of folders. And do not suggest the command line...arcane, misanthropic pile of excrement that it is.
Funny, that song mentions the Sheik (or the King, I forget which) calling out his jet fighters...pretty sure that wasn't Afghanistan, but then geography probably wasn't the Clash's strong point.
Why would MS want to target desktops? MS sees their bread and butter being stolen by handheld iThingies. They feel that without some sort of paradigm shift on their part, they'll be left-non-circular-shifted out of the buffer of customer (business or consumer) attention span. So, in an amazingly brilliant insight, they decide to take the iThingy paradigm and transplant it onto the desktop thereby making it relevant again...errr...or something...it made so much sense when the MS salesdroid said it...
Just think of it as a FrankenTop...in a deep and mystical MS marketing laboratory hidden away from prying eyes, a marketroid, whose eyes are reminiscent of rotating spheres of flashing lights, looks up to the heavens or the ceiling of the lab with a diabolical grin: Apple will NEVER follow us HERE, Bwahahahahaha!!!!!
Actually, it was under Johnson that budgets got out of control. Johnson ramped up the Vietnam war and started many of the Great Society programs...I'm...errr...old enough to remember. When Nixon got in, we had still had both of those but then interest rates and inflation spiked. So Dick attempted wage and price controls. That failed....then he failed to continue to be President.
Ford was in for too short a period. Then came Carter.
Carter's problem was that he had all the leadership qualities of a slug. I don't recall much about his fiscal policies but at the time he left office unemployment had skyrocketed, as had inflation and interest rates because Paul Volcker had raised them to fight inflation.
Then Reagan came in and did a deal with the Democrats to cut federal spending and cut taxes. The Democrats stabbed him in the back and he had to raise taxes instead. But Volcker's interest rates had damped down inflation by Reagan's second term whereupon tax reform finally happened and help flatten out rates and remove tax loopholes. But we still had mind-blowing deficits because it turned out you couldn't tax your way to surpluses, expenditures mattered.
George Bush I more or less kept the story-line but the budget was breaking bounds again, it seems Congress couldn't stop spending, so he raised tax rates and lost the election to Clinton.
Clinton attempted to raise government spending but 2 years in, he got a Republican Congress and they couldn't agree on spending priorities..other than to let Defense wither. Tax receipts started to go up because HillaryCare had been defeated and the Internet Bubble. Also, the housing bubble was just getting started. Clinton then bought the investment banks story that a modern banking system needed no walls between investment and commercial banking. That meant that the taxpayer would now be on the line if the investment banks screwed the pooch...which they promptly did by figuring out how to securitize home loans and sell the to the rest of the world being smart enough not to hold the hot potatoes they had created. They could screw the pooch knowing full well the taxpayer would save them.
George Bush II thought this was just potty and the federal reserve failed to notice a housing bubble until tripping over it (but the American people hold most the blame by flipping houses, taking out mortgages they couldn't afford, etc....and there were many others with their straw in that soda). Bush also ramped up defense spending to pay for the wars but then didn't fund it because he'd already cut taxes since surpluses were to be had as far as the eye could see...which turned out to be not very far. When the surpluses failed to come into Immaculate Conception surprising the Conservatives, they conveniently forgot to go back and rescind the tax cuts.
When it all came crashing down, Obama said "Me, Me, I will save America. Hope. Change." Except that he didn't, unfortunately for him he also got a Democrat Congress; both could realize their wet dream of Universal Healthcare. Except that they couldn't because the Insurance companies had too much clout, so we got a lot uncertainty about what it all meant...well, the bill was 2000 pages of complicated interactions. To make things worse, Obama bought into the Keynsian notion that he could spend the U.S. into prosperity. It wouldn't worked too but it was clear that they had no fiscal sense which spooked the rest of the economy into keeping its cash close to its vest thereby depressing economic activity. The EuroZone caught the flu from the Housing Bubble in the U.S. but also because they were an accident waiting to happen. It happened.
Regardless of whether there is enough land for reservoirs, isn't putting more land under water kind of like what oceans rising would also do? But I'll bet oceans are more efficient at putting the least amount of land underwater.
Most reps and senators are honorable people, there are a few bad eggs. Yesterday in front of the House Armed Services Committee, they had heads of several corporations that supply the military, Lockheed-Martin was one I recall, but they also had some smaller firms and even very small firms. Several on the committee encouraged the panel to tell them what to do, raise taxes or cut expenditures. To a man and a woman, the panel said it was not their job to tell Congress what to do, they were only there to point out the effects of Sequestration were it to happen (actually, the effects are already starting because businesses have to plan ahead). To a man and woman, the Committee claimed they didn't want Sequestration but it is there and they must do something about it.
Then a congressman from Ohio got his chance, last name was Ryan I believe (not the well-known Ryan). Dunno if he was Dem or Rep. He told off the panel by saying that every Tom, Dick, and Mary, and Jane had advice: don't raise taxes, keep all services. In short, he accused the panel of doing the same by refusing to answer what they thought Congress should do. The result was that there is no consensus from the American people about what Congress should do, but they expect Congress to fix the problem the people helped to create by voting in representatives, senators, and presidents but never calling them to task for the financial problems.
The point: it is the American people which caused Congress's spending and taxing problems, not the other way around. So stop acting like you somehow have Seen the Light and Congress is full of jackals. It isn't. It is the American People who refuse to take responsibility and tell Congress they are willing to bear increased taxes and decreased expenditures to fix the budget.
And as much as I don't like Al Franken and believe he has no sense of fiscal responsibility believing government can solve everything and bring to the Promised Bunny Land, one thing he is not is corrupt.
I don't trust the Texas Republican Party further than I can spit a two-headed rat, but I don't support the educational weenies produced by academia's Schools of Education either. I've had the misfortune to teach a few of these potted plants, it isn't any wonder Johnny and Sally have the attention span of gnat and cannot solve problems without needing a self-esteem booster shot.
Never wrote a scientific paper have you? Or made a scientific presentation? I've used both PP and Latex with Beamer for slide shows. I can (a) spend all my time hunt and pecking for symbols and attempting to get the format looking something like a scientist is used to seeing, or (b) spend my time on the ideas and let Latex get the symbols and formatting correct. MS Word is similarly horrible for scientific documents.
I admit Latex and Tex aren't for most people because they do require you learn some fairly arcane syntax and possibly macro expansions, and to understand a bit about typesetting. However, once learned, Word and PP look like rinky-dink toys.
But it can solve the problem MS intends it to solve. I don't think they are worried about Linux groupies reimaging their devices to run Linux. Linux isn't very popular among the proles, and there aren't enough groupies to make a difference. What MS sees is Google and Apple stovepiping their devices running counter to MS's business model of licensing their OS, so those devices will never be MS devices...put quickly, they cannot attack their enemies that way...and in MS's outlook, enemies abound.
They could merely put out their own device and leave it open for different OSs. However, you have to put yourself into the primitive and paranoid mindset that MS as acquired over the years. Being a nasty company, they think of other companies as being as nasty as they would be. If they had to compete against an MS, they'd like to take over MS devices with another OS, and that is what they fear from Google. Google has enough resources to resurface all the Surfaces overnight with GoogleWare should it ever catch on as it appears it is. So MS must lock them down or risk waking up some morning and finding they have no market.
MS has no foresight about where their markets should go, hence they appear headless and willing to throw spaghetti everywhere in the hopes that some of it will stick. Apple and Google are shifting MS's markets out from underneath them. In a way, MS brought this on themselves. They only allowed token opposition in their markets hence the only way to compete was to bypass MS's traditional markets...in effect, redefining the market landscape, i.e., develop markets which cannibalize MS's old markets (so there's a ready-made growth avenue) and in which these new markets Google and Apple could do well as opposed to markets controlled by MS.
In Apple's case, I don't think it was an overt foresight that caused them to think they could attack MS. I don't think they thought of MS much at all but were instead following a trajectory of creating or expanding markets in which they could do well. In Google's case, I do think they believe MS is the enemy simply because if left alone, MS would control Google's markets. Google's main market is information and ads, that's not Apple's but they do interact. Both now realize that cannibalizing MS's markets provide a nice potential for growth. And now MS is faced with what they have done everything to stop, real competitors.
Apparently, he writes stuff for www.wnd.com...kind of hard to tell what they are but they seem to be a net media company. Anyhow, the fellow saying these things, Michael Maloof, seems to be saying a lot of things on WND. It is hard to believe that he'd be revealing secret information because he'd be arrested for that sort of thing. So maybe he's just running off at that mouth? It wouldn't surprise me that Huawei (I think's that's pronounced Way-Way) has back doors in their equipment given their relationships with the PLA.
So at least on the surface your knee-jerk reaction appears to be unsubstantiated, he's not overtly working for a defense contractor.
Bingo! I see no reason to use the public clouds for federal work. The U.S. government is big enough to run their own clouds where they can set the priorities. In fact, it would probably be cheaper and more secure in the long run. Who among us would turn government security over to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or any of the other commercial entities? Just the privacy issues alone are a full-employment program for lawyers.
True...to an extent. However, it is always good to have a sense of proportion. Back in the day, when people were first being replaced by machines, there were many other things unmachined which people could still do and hence the total problem was manageable. However, we are reaching the point that just about any job can be machined out of existence. There are fewer places to turn for enough employment. How many jobs that require something a machine cannot do can a society support?
I would argue there are far fewer jobs that cannot be mechanized. And many economists agree and consider this to be one of the prime factors in the current failure of U.S. business to hire, they don't have to. Many spent the downturn mechanizing. And it doesn't even have to be a replacement for a human that machines make available to businesses. Those self-checkout lanes at the supermarket mean less clerks because they've cut out the middle man, you get to do yourself. Phone Hell when calling a business to try and talk to human means that human's job is now being done by you.
The problems do not stop there. Computers and modeling allow us to remove all kinds of slop in just about any system. You can run the system so close to perfection that the least little blip and it tanks (think flash crash). It's easy to code for average behavior, it isn't easy coding for the freak "what if". There's no hysteresis left in many of our systems. And they all get linked together so we can expect bigger clusterf--ks in the future.
I think rather than GM or any of the other ghosts you are trying to conjure about modern food production, let us consider the tomato. That round, red, delicious looking, but tasteless, monument to food. It turns out that many years ago, through much cross-breeding (yep, good old cross-breeding), it was found a particular trait could be had with a high frequency. The trait: uniform red color even near the stem. Unfortunately, the genetics were such that it also hosed the taste. The reason was chlorophyll in the tomato. The genetics that got bred out made for lots of the stuff which turned into tasty sugars or caused them to be produced (memory fails a bit here) in the tomato. The tomato when not ripe should be nice deep green, now it is a sickly light green due to the lack of chlorophyll.
This was only recently discovered. And let's observe precisely why this inferior blob of an excuse for a tomato sold better than the one not bred for such uniform red color: the consumer. Turns out the consumer would always buy the blob rather than the real tomato even though he/she could easily taste the difference.
The lesson we observe here: GM and plain pumping for growth are not always the problem, and I very much doubt the former is at all given the studies. And the consumer is about as smart as a sack of wet mice (thank you, Foghorn Leghorn) when it comes to choosing food.
Won't work. As soon as the new rules came out, there'd be brand new companies in China devoted to producing and "selling" whatever wild-ass thing you think you've patented. And they'd knock it in a few weeks. There would be no restriction that it be well-made. And Mr. Ching in China would be selling oodles of it to Mr. Chong in the U.S.
The only thing that will stop the madness is to scrap whole patentable categories. No process patents, that includes software as that is a process. That's for starters. I'm sure others can add more that should go. Oh, and no sneaky making small changes for getting a patent extension like the drug companies have been doing.
Your problem is that MS and FOSS have taught you to disrespect software as valueless, and that the separation between software and hardware somehow bestows mysterious pixie dust that improves everything it touches. Apple does software well and they do integration well. Some of us choose to pay for that, others don't. So what is your problem again, altruism attempting to save the proles from some perceived miscarriage of justice?
Errr...maybe...but at least for housing, capitalism tanked the U.S. and much of the World's economies. Now, they did have some help in local zoning law changes, government sponsored loan buying agencies. However, it was Wall Street that figured out how to securitize packages of loans and sell them out to the rest of the world. They happened to find ready helpers in the loan rating agencies, which are part of private enterprise.
And let's not forget the American People, those paradigms of capitalist virtue who flipped houses, took out the equity of their existing houses, got second mortgages, bought houses they could ill-afford but were too stupid to realize it because it would have required they read the loan agreements they were signing.
There were the private construction companies building McMansions right and left. Private banks all too willing to finance those puffs of capitalist buoyancy. Private real estate agents willing to sell anything to anyone knowing many couldn't possibly afford it.
And there was the wall between the commercial and investment banks that came tumbling down because the bankers promised to be real good and modern banking required there be free private enterprise, well, golly, everywhere.
So let's not get all teary eyed over capitalism and housing.
Oh, and for profit colleges are raping returning servicemen and women blind offering anything to get them to sign on the dotted line. And health care is already privatized. You can tell because if you are unemployed and cannot afford it, you are shit out of luck. That's what capitalism does, it puts a price on everything. And if you cannot afford, you don't get it. Tell that to the fellow who paid his taxes for years until he had no job to pay them with because he got laid off at 50 and no private company will touch him with a ten foot pole.
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Only by default, there are two other settings, one of which will let you install anything unsigned. And it isn't clear the other two settings will stop a drive by.
No it isn't a stupid comparison. Most people decide between the two depending on the software, not the hardware whose specs escape most of the buying public.
There stock price isn't not high by price/earnings. Their price is only high to you because you see the price per stock. If they would split that stock, they'd have a more normal price, but then everybody and their brothers dog (not, of course, the totally techno-twits on Slashdot who wouldn't be caught dead using an iProduct) would attempt to buy Apple stock and then the P/E really would get out of whack.
And this effects you how? Besides being forced to make disparaging comments about a company you wouldn't ever buy from?
Is there a way to get a columns file view in MS file explorer thingy? I don't mean where the additional columns are attributes, I mean where the additional columns show you the next level down in the folder hierarchy from a selected folder in the left most view.
I use Macs most of the time but periodically have to use a Windows 7 box. I find their file explorer thing irritating and am tired of clicking my way up and down a hierarchy of folders. And do not suggest the command line...arcane, misanthropic pile of excrement that it is.
Funny, that song mentions the Sheik (or the King, I forget which) calling out his jet fighters...pretty sure that wasn't Afghanistan, but then geography probably wasn't the Clash's strong point.
It could have been worse, how about Muskrat Love? That would have been truly diabolical.
Why would MS want to target desktops? MS sees their bread and butter being stolen by handheld iThingies. They feel that without some sort of paradigm shift on their part, they'll be left-non-circular-shifted out of the buffer of customer (business or consumer) attention span. So, in an amazingly brilliant insight, they decide to take the iThingy paradigm and transplant it onto the desktop thereby making it relevant again...errr...or something...it made so much sense when the MS salesdroid said it...
Just think of it as a FrankenTop...in a deep and mystical MS marketing laboratory hidden away from prying eyes, a marketroid, whose eyes are reminiscent of rotating spheres of flashing lights, looks up to the heavens or the ceiling of the lab with a diabolical grin: Apple will NEVER follow us HERE, Bwahahahahaha!!!!!
Actually, it was under Johnson that budgets got out of control. Johnson ramped up the Vietnam war and started many of the Great Society programs...I'm...errr...old enough to remember. When Nixon got in, we had still had both of those but then interest rates and inflation spiked. So Dick attempted wage and price controls. That failed....then he failed to continue to be President.
Ford was in for too short a period. Then came Carter.
Carter's problem was that he had all the leadership qualities of a slug. I don't recall much about his fiscal policies but at the time he left office unemployment had skyrocketed, as had inflation and interest rates because Paul Volcker had raised them to fight inflation.
Then Reagan came in and did a deal with the Democrats to cut federal spending and cut taxes. The Democrats stabbed him in the back and he had to raise taxes instead. But Volcker's interest rates had damped down inflation by Reagan's second term whereupon tax reform finally happened and help flatten out rates and remove tax loopholes. But we still had mind-blowing deficits because it turned out you couldn't tax your way to surpluses, expenditures mattered.
George Bush I more or less kept the story-line but the budget was breaking bounds again, it seems Congress couldn't stop spending, so he raised tax rates and lost the election to Clinton.
Clinton attempted to raise government spending but 2 years in, he got a Republican Congress and they couldn't agree on spending priorities..other than to let Defense wither. Tax receipts started to go up because HillaryCare had been defeated and the Internet Bubble. Also, the housing bubble was just getting started. Clinton then bought the investment banks story that a modern banking system needed no walls between investment and commercial banking. That meant that the taxpayer would now be on the line if the investment banks screwed the pooch...which they promptly did by figuring out how to securitize home loans and sell the to the rest of the world being smart enough not to hold the hot potatoes they had created. They could screw the pooch knowing full well the taxpayer would save them.
George Bush II thought this was just potty and the federal reserve failed to notice a housing bubble until tripping over it (but the American people hold most the blame by flipping houses, taking out mortgages they couldn't afford, etc....and there were many others with their straw in that soda). Bush also ramped up defense spending to pay for the wars but then didn't fund it because he'd already cut taxes since surpluses were to be had as far as the eye could see...which turned out to be not very far. When the surpluses failed to come into Immaculate Conception surprising the Conservatives, they conveniently forgot to go back and rescind the tax cuts.
When it all came crashing down, Obama said "Me, Me, I will save America. Hope. Change." Except that he didn't, unfortunately for him he also got a Democrat Congress; both could realize their wet dream of Universal Healthcare. Except that they couldn't because the Insurance companies had too much clout, so we got a lot uncertainty about what it all meant...well, the bill was 2000 pages of complicated interactions. To make things worse, Obama bought into the Keynsian notion that he could spend the U.S. into prosperity. It wouldn't worked too but it was clear that they had no fiscal sense which spooked the rest of the economy into keeping its cash close to its vest thereby depressing economic activity. The EuroZone caught the flu from the Housing Bubble in the U.S. but also because they were an accident waiting to happen. It happened.
Regardless of whether there is enough land for reservoirs, isn't putting more land under water kind of like what oceans rising would also do? But I'll bet oceans are more efficient at putting the least amount of land underwater.
Most reps and senators are honorable people, there are a few bad eggs. Yesterday in front of the House Armed Services Committee, they had heads of several corporations that supply the military, Lockheed-Martin was one I recall, but they also had some smaller firms and even very small firms. Several on the committee encouraged the panel to tell them what to do, raise taxes or cut expenditures. To a man and a woman, the panel said it was not their job to tell Congress what to do, they were only there to point out the effects of Sequestration were it to happen (actually, the effects are already starting because businesses have to plan ahead). To a man and woman, the Committee claimed they didn't want Sequestration but it is there and they must do something about it.
Then a congressman from Ohio got his chance, last name was Ryan I believe (not the well-known Ryan). Dunno if he was Dem or Rep. He told off the panel by saying that every Tom, Dick, and Mary, and Jane had advice: don't raise taxes, keep all services. In short, he accused the panel of doing the same by refusing to answer what they thought Congress should do. The result was that there is no consensus from the American people about what Congress should do, but they expect Congress to fix the problem the people helped to create by voting in representatives, senators, and presidents but never calling them to task for the financial problems.
The point: it is the American people which caused Congress's spending and taxing problems, not the other way around. So stop acting like you somehow have Seen the Light and Congress is full of jackals. It isn't. It is the American People who refuse to take responsibility and tell Congress they are willing to bear increased taxes and decreased expenditures to fix the budget.
And as much as I don't like Al Franken and believe he has no sense of fiscal responsibility believing government can solve everything and bring to the Promised Bunny Land, one thing he is not is corrupt.
I don't trust the Texas Republican Party further than I can spit a two-headed rat, but I don't support the educational weenies produced by academia's Schools of Education either. I've had the misfortune to teach a few of these potted plants, it isn't any wonder Johnny and Sally have the attention span of gnat and cannot solve problems without needing a self-esteem booster shot.
Never wrote a scientific paper have you? Or made a scientific presentation? I've used both PP and Latex with Beamer for slide shows. I can (a) spend all my time hunt and pecking for symbols and attempting to get the format looking something like a scientist is used to seeing, or (b) spend my time on the ideas and let Latex get the symbols and formatting correct. MS Word is similarly horrible for scientific documents.
I admit Latex and Tex aren't for most people because they do require you learn some fairly arcane syntax and possibly macro expansions, and to understand a bit about typesetting. However, once learned, Word and PP look like rinky-dink toys.
Want to bet that is how the Chinese see it?
But it can solve the problem MS intends it to solve. I don't think they are worried about Linux groupies reimaging their devices to run Linux. Linux isn't very popular among the proles, and there aren't enough groupies to make a difference. What MS sees is Google and Apple stovepiping their devices running counter to MS's business model of licensing their OS, so those devices will never be MS devices...put quickly, they cannot attack their enemies that way...and in MS's outlook, enemies abound.
They could merely put out their own device and leave it open for different OSs. However, you have to put yourself into the primitive and paranoid mindset that MS as acquired over the years. Being a nasty company, they think of other companies as being as nasty as they would be. If they had to compete against an MS, they'd like to take over MS devices with another OS, and that is what they fear from Google. Google has enough resources to resurface all the Surfaces overnight with GoogleWare should it ever catch on as it appears it is. So MS must lock them down or risk waking up some morning and finding they have no market.
MS has no foresight about where their markets should go, hence they appear headless and willing to throw spaghetti everywhere in the hopes that some of it will stick. Apple and Google are shifting MS's markets out from underneath them. In a way, MS brought this on themselves. They only allowed token opposition in their markets hence the only way to compete was to bypass MS's traditional markets...in effect, redefining the market landscape, i.e., develop markets which cannibalize MS's old markets (so there's a ready-made growth avenue) and in which these new markets Google and Apple could do well as opposed to markets controlled by MS.
In Apple's case, I don't think it was an overt foresight that caused them to think they could attack MS. I don't think they thought of MS much at all but were instead following a trajectory of creating or expanding markets in which they could do well. In Google's case, I do think they believe MS is the enemy simply because if left alone, MS would control Google's markets. Google's main market is information and ads, that's not Apple's but they do interact. Both now realize that cannibalizing MS's markets provide a nice potential for growth. And now MS is faced with what they have done everything to stop, real competitors.
So you are saying MS keeps its root key in a rather private orifice of Ballmer? Well, I guess its safe then.
Apparently, he writes stuff for www.wnd.com...kind of hard to tell what they are but they seem to be a net media company. Anyhow, the fellow saying these things, Michael Maloof, seems to be saying a lot of things on WND. It is hard to believe that he'd be revealing secret information because he'd be arrested for that sort of thing. So maybe he's just running off at that mouth? It wouldn't surprise me that Huawei (I think's that's pronounced Way-Way) has back doors in their equipment given their relationships with the PLA.
So at least on the surface your knee-jerk reaction appears to be unsubstantiated, he's not overtly working for a defense contractor.
Why would you say this?
How many fucking times does this list need to be repeated on Slashdot?
Bingo! I see no reason to use the public clouds for federal work. The U.S. government is big enough to run their own clouds where they can set the priorities. In fact, it would probably be cheaper and more secure in the long run. Who among us would turn government security over to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or any of the other commercial entities? Just the privacy issues alone are a full-employment program for lawyers.
True...to an extent. However, it is always good to have a sense of proportion. Back in the day, when people were first being replaced by machines, there were many other things unmachined which people could still do and hence the total problem was manageable. However, we are reaching the point that just about any job can be machined out of existence. There are fewer places to turn for enough employment. How many jobs that require something a machine cannot do can a society support?
I would argue there are far fewer jobs that cannot be mechanized. And many economists agree and consider this to be one of the prime factors in the current failure of U.S. business to hire, they don't have to. Many spent the downturn mechanizing. And it doesn't even have to be a replacement for a human that machines make available to businesses. Those self-checkout lanes at the supermarket mean less clerks because they've cut out the middle man, you get to do yourself. Phone Hell when calling a business to try and talk to human means that human's job is now being done by you.
The problems do not stop there. Computers and modeling allow us to remove all kinds of slop in just about any system. You can run the system so close to perfection that the least little blip and it tanks (think flash crash). It's easy to code for average behavior, it isn't easy coding for the freak "what if". There's no hysteresis left in many of our systems. And they all get linked together so we can expect bigger clusterf--ks in the future.
I think rather than GM or any of the other ghosts you are trying to conjure about modern food production, let us consider the tomato. That round, red, delicious looking, but tasteless, monument to food. It turns out that many years ago, through much cross-breeding (yep, good old cross-breeding), it was found a particular trait could be had with a high frequency. The trait: uniform red color even near the stem. Unfortunately, the genetics were such that it also hosed the taste. The reason was chlorophyll in the tomato. The genetics that got bred out made for lots of the stuff which turned into tasty sugars or caused them to be produced (memory fails a bit here) in the tomato. The tomato when not ripe should be nice deep green, now it is a sickly light green due to the lack of chlorophyll.
This was only recently discovered. And let's observe precisely why this inferior blob of an excuse for a tomato sold better than the one not bred for such uniform red color: the consumer. Turns out the consumer would always buy the blob rather than the real tomato even though he/she could easily taste the difference.
The lesson we observe here: GM and plain pumping for growth are not always the problem, and I very much doubt the former is at all given the studies. And the consumer is about as smart as a sack of wet mice (thank you, Foghorn Leghorn) when it comes to choosing food.
Won't work. As soon as the new rules came out, there'd be brand new companies in China devoted to producing and "selling" whatever wild-ass thing you think you've patented. And they'd knock it in a few weeks. There would be no restriction that it be well-made. And Mr. Ching in China would be selling oodles of it to Mr. Chong in the U.S.
The only thing that will stop the madness is to scrap whole patentable categories. No process patents, that includes software as that is a process. That's for starters. I'm sure others can add more that should go. Oh, and no sneaky making small changes for getting a patent extension like the drug companies have been doing.
Your problem is that MS and FOSS have taught you to disrespect software as valueless, and that the separation between software and hardware somehow bestows mysterious pixie dust that improves everything it touches. Apple does software well and they do integration well. Some of us choose to pay for that, others don't. So what is your problem again, altruism attempting to save the proles from some perceived miscarriage of justice?
Errr...maybe...but at least for housing, capitalism tanked the U.S. and much of the World's economies. Now, they did have some help in local zoning law changes, government sponsored loan buying agencies. However, it was Wall Street that figured out how to securitize packages of loans and sell them out to the rest of the world. They happened to find ready helpers in the loan rating agencies, which are part of private enterprise.
And let's not forget the American People, those paradigms of capitalist virtue who flipped houses, took out the equity of their existing houses, got second mortgages, bought houses they could ill-afford but were too stupid to realize it because it would have required they read the loan agreements they were signing.
There were the private construction companies building McMansions right and left. Private banks all too willing to finance those puffs of capitalist buoyancy. Private real estate agents willing to sell anything to anyone knowing many couldn't possibly afford it.
And there was the wall between the commercial and investment banks that came tumbling down because the bankers promised to be real good and modern banking required there be free private enterprise, well, golly, everywhere.
So let's not get all teary eyed over capitalism and housing.
Oh, and for profit colleges are raping returning servicemen and women blind offering anything to get them to sign on the dotted line. And health care is already privatized. You can tell because if you are unemployed and cannot afford it, you are shit out of luck. That's what capitalism does, it puts a price on everything. And if you cannot afford, you don't get it. Tell that to the fellow who paid his taxes for years until he had no job to pay them with because he got laid off at 50 and no private company will touch him with a ten foot pole.