what a great illustration of the fact that we have WAY too much of our food crops being grown as huge tracts of monoculture, often all the same crop and all the same species. What a great target for famine-causing organisms.
While I generally agree with your sentiment, I was surprised to read (in this article) that:
Black stem rust itself is nothing new. It has been a major blight on heat production since the rise of agriculture, and the Romans even prayed to a stem rust god, Robigus. It can reduce a field of ripening grain to a dead, tangled mass, and vast outbreaks egularly used to rip through wheat regions. The last to hit the North American breadbasket, in 1954, wiped out 40 per cent of the crop. In the cold war both the US and the Soviet Union stockpiled stem rust spores as a biological weapon.
So... rust fungus has been less of a problem in recent years, when we've been less diverse. Quite interesting.
(oh, and I now have a new favorite God - Robigus.)
What's the definition of "central Asia"? Is there really "billions of people" there?
A few seconds research would've give you an answer (80 million for the lazy).
I think however that the range of the fungus is far wider than just central Asia. Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia (along with the countries they supply grain to] could be affected, along with the rest of the world if the fungus continues to spread.
New scientist has a better article (from almost a year ago).
However, as people like to say, even bad data is better than no data.
It depends how bad (inaccurate) the data is. For instance, I'd rather have no data on violent crime in a particular area then inaccurate data if I was deciding to buy a house there.
I'm afraid that it is an OSS issue. You see, anti-phishing functionality appeared (briefly) in Safari 3.0 betas. If Safari was OSS, you could just use that code rather than writing a completely new extension.
I can't wait for the SDK to ship, not because I want to install 3rd party applications on my iPhone, but I can't wait to see you're facial tic on finding you have to pay $100 for a suite of apps new iPhone users get for free;-)
All Paypal did was have a faq containing a list of anti-phishing features & browsers that support those features.
They don't recommend against Safari, they just recommend browsers that support anti-phishing features.
No doubt when Apple gets around to adding these features (pity Safari's not OSS, or it could be added easily by third parties), PayPal will add them to the list.
Nevertheless, if the story were in essence reversed and it was about a faceless company suing an unrepresented guy and getting a hefty award of damages for some relatively minor IP infringement, we'd get a bunch of bearded geek hippies rambling on about how "information wants to be free" and "I don't believe in imaginary property" and so on.
Do you seriously think that if a geek used a company's photo without a license & when caught, fraudulently filed suit for defamation, following it up with trademark infringement, deceptive trade practices, and tortuous interference, that geek hippies would equate this with information wanting to be free?
Seriously? Or perhaps you were just wanting to have a pathetic little dig at your perception of slashdot groupthink.
The article is looking at things totally from the wrong point of view - it's as if they believe that Microsoft's problem is that it has a huge pile of cash & don't know what to do with it.
It's not. Microsoft's problem is Google. Google are eating them in the only arena where you can make serious money on the web (ad brokerage) and doing things to threaten MS's monopoly elsewhere (Google Apps, Photoshop on linux, Webmail, etc)
The Yahoo purchase might not be a solution to this problem, but a SAP purchase sure as hell won't be.
(and frankly, I can't imagine SAP's websphere/java using userbase being enthused with the next SAP release being C# only)
Slashdot Mirror
it's free 'as in freedom', not 'as in beer'
Are you on crack? DRMd music is not free as in freedom.
This scheme is nothing more than a pay-up-front subscription service - one copied from Nokia at that.
I even doubt that Wikileaks made it public;
Please point us to other places this document can be found online.
I mean, they must have some kind of advertisement or at least a publicly available description of this service, no?
All documents on Wikileaks were distributed somewhere, I don't see what your point is.
I doubt that half the stories on Wikileaks report that a story appeared on
That's because Slashdot is a news aggregation blog & Wikileaks is not. (Even a two year old would understand this distinction.)
Now stop whining. Wikileaks stories appear frequently on slashdot because they're interesting.
While I generally agree with your sentiment, I was surprised to read (in this article) that:So... rust fungus has been less of a problem in recent years, when we've been less diverse. Quite interesting.
(oh, and I now have a new favorite God - Robigus.)
What's the definition of "central Asia"? Is there really "billions of people" there?
A few seconds research would've give you an answer (80 million for the lazy).
I think however that the range of the fungus is far wider than just central Asia. Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia (along with the countries they supply grain to] could be affected, along with the rest of the world if the fungus continues to spread.
New scientist has a better article (from almost a year ago).
Yeah, you got it, everyone who has an iPhone is shallow.
I actually said the inverse - that many shallow people like iPhones. This is true for many good products - nothing for you to get upset about.
I won't comment on the rest of your post, as it's based on that faulty premise. Thanks for playing however.
1. BBC top executive got himself an iPhone
Hmmmmmmn, that sound right - BBC execs would be the epitome of the particular breed of shallow that seems to love the iPhone.
There's numerous other devices that would have benefited from a DRM-free iPlayer stream - why'd the iPhone deserve this special treatment?
i wasn't aware Paul McCartney was dead...
I wasn't aware it made any difference?
Before Steve Jobs, the phone was not smart.
Spoken like someone who's never been to Japan (or Europe for that matter)
There's a reason the US is the only market the iPhone's doing well in.
Damn straight.
Next up they'll be trying to tell us that Steve Jobs didn't invent the smart phone!
Uuuuuuuh 400 Million for a body of works that's set begin expiring in 2013?
I guess $400 Million US Pesos is a only a few hundred pounds.
Ironically many offices are still using IE6.
Why is that ironic?
And what does the fact that many offices use an old browser have to do with the discussion?
However, as people like to say, even bad data is better than no data.
It depends how bad (inaccurate) the data is. For instance, I'd rather have no data on violent crime in a particular area then inaccurate data if I was deciding to buy a house there.
It would have taken you less time to click on the link I posted then to write that sentence. From the link:
Whiney Mac Fanboy goes head to head with a Mac Fanboy who is currently whining!
:-)
The words in bold type are redundant - all Mac Fanboys posting on Slashdot are whining.
Yes, but webkit isn't a browser, and you can't add anti-phishing functionality to it.
Thanks for adding to the discussion tho' - very helpful.
What does that have to do with being OSS or not?
I'm afraid that it is an OSS issue. You see, anti-phishing functionality appeared (briefly) in Safari 3.0 betas. If Safari was OSS, you could just use that code rather than writing a completely new extension.
I can't wait for the SDK to ship, not because I want to install 3rd party applications on my iPhone, but I can't wait to see you're facial tic on finding you have to pay $100 for a suite of apps new iPhone users get for free ;-)
All Paypal did was have a faq containing a list of anti-phishing features & browsers that support those features.
They don't recommend against Safari, they just recommend browsers that support anti-phishing features.
No doubt when Apple gets around to adding these features (pity Safari's not OSS, or it could be added easily by third parties), PayPal will add them to the list.
The iPhone has to be hacked to make it open.
It is one of the most closed phones out there.
Nevertheless, if the story were in essence reversed and it was about a faceless company suing an unrepresented guy and getting a hefty award of damages for some relatively minor IP infringement, we'd get a bunch of bearded geek hippies rambling on about how "information wants to be free" and "I don't believe in imaginary property" and so on.
Do you seriously think that if a geek used a company's photo without a license & when caught, fraudulently filed suit for defamation, following it up with trademark infringement, deceptive trade practices, and tortuous interference, that geek hippies would equate this with information wanting to be free?
Seriously? Or perhaps you were just wanting to have a pathetic little dig at your perception of slashdot groupthink.
The article is looking at things totally from the wrong point of view - it's as if they believe that Microsoft's problem is that it has a huge pile of cash & don't know what to do with it.
It's not. Microsoft's problem is Google. Google are eating them in the only arena where you can make serious money on the web (ad brokerage) and doing things to threaten MS's monopoly elsewhere (Google Apps, Photoshop on linux, Webmail, etc)
The Yahoo purchase might not be a solution to this problem, but a SAP purchase sure as hell won't be.
(and frankly, I can't imagine SAP's websphere/java using userbase being enthused with the next SAP release being C# only)
Copying is neither theft nor larceny nor burglary, but it is stealing.
Incorrect. At best, your sentence should read: "Copying without license is stealing".
The fact that you equate any copying (even with permission!) with stealing pretty much shows where you're coming from.
E-meter for sale - cheap! Only $2.95! Just call +46 8 752 56 00 or
You're tricking people into calling Microsoft Sweden & asking for E-meters?
How's that going to teach the scientologists a lesson?