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Comment What?! (Score 5, Interesting) 186

I'm typing this on a monitor with 3840x2160 resolution, at 60hz right now. I posted about it weeks ago:

Clicky

It's like $600 when on sale, and it works superb for coding and playing games. Skyrim/Saints Row 4 plays fine on a GTX 660 at 4k resolution, you just disable any AA (not needed), but enable vsync (tearing is more visible at 4k, so just use that). Perhaps that's just me - but things seem fine at 4k res on a medium-cost graphics card.

A few generations of video cards, and everything will be > 60-FPS smooth again anyway (partially thanks to consoles again), so I don't really need to wait for a dynamic frame smoothing algorithm implementation to enjoy having a giant screen for coding now.

I don't see any reason why you'd want to wait - it's as cheap as two decent monitors, and if you're slightly near-sighted like me, it's just really great. See my previous post for a review link and an image of all the PC Ultima games on screen at once.

Ryan Fenton

Comment Re:Can a company patent it? (Score 1) 207

Yes, one can often patent a drug for a new purpose. You probably can't charge $1,000/dose for a repurposing, but it can be done.

The absolutely shocking prevalence of autism today (currently estimated at 1 in 68 births, probably 1 in 40 boys) will make any drug that has a good effect profitable.

As the parent of an autistic teenager, I'm hoping for the best. It does appear that, like Tolstoy said, all autistic kids are autistic in their own way; so I'm not holding out a lot of hope. Some, though...

Comment Re:And hippies will protest it (Score 1) 396

Wow, for a second there I thought you were going to cite something other than the infamous Schmeiser case where the guy knowingly and intentionally saved seed he knew was cross pollinated. Accidental cross pollination does not equal knowing reproduction. That's like saying you can get sued for home movies and citing someone who got in trouble for recording inside a theater. You left out the most critical detail.

Simply put, they can't, and the result is suing people for storing seed.

Offhand I would speculate that, if forever reason, a farmer was trying to age seed to decrease the viability for whatever unknown reason they could simply check some records and find out if the numbers add up. It's an odd situation you've come up with, perhaps you could throw me a shred of something beyond blatant speculation.

Remember, if it happens just once, you can no longer say it doesn't happen.

Okay then, prove that it's happened once.

Comment Re:And hippies will protest it (Score 1) 396

That's an ignorant argument though. It's like telling a doctor not to bandage a slit wrist because it doesn't fix the underlying problem. No one is saying these types of things should be permanent, they're just to keep people healthy until economic development can provide a better diet. Somehow I doubt the people this would help are going to play the nirvana fallacy. Your cost claim is ridiculous. It costs a lot less to make a GMO than to fix a shitload of socioeconomic and political problems. As for your corporate issue, this is developed by a university funded by a charity. Perhaps you should RFTA before making assumptions. You've just justified the GP's post.

Comment Re:And hippies will protest it (Score 3, Insightful) 396

I mean, have hippies even started protesting this?

Not yet, far as I know, but since every GMO that has ever made it close to commercialization has been protested, I don't see why this should be any different.

And it IS a fucking strawman argument.

It would be if there were not first world activists who actually think that the poorest people on earth should just go buy some healthier foods. There is a reason why people who have made it their life's work to combat starvation and malnutrition are taking the route of Golden Rice and other biofortified crops (and it must also be said that the non-GMO biofortified crops escape all the controversy, almost as if the arguments against the GMO ones have nothing to do with their actual properties and everything to do with an irrational bias against their origin)

There are concerns about whether it will affect the fertility of the soil.

No, there aren't. Genetic engineering is not a black box. I don't see how beta carotene production is going to impact the soil. Sounds like a bullshit claim some clueless anti-GMO activist pulled out the usual place. I highly doubt this rice will be any different than any other rice, on average, in terms of soil impact.

ignore the lunatic fringes in any controversey

If we do that then there is no controversy. This is like creationism, or vaccine rejection. You can reject certain phylogeny, or take issue with particular vaccines, and you can make valid criticisms about certain aspects of some GMOs, but the movements as a whole are without merit.

Comment Re:Why not just take vitamin pills? (Score 1) 396

If your goal is helping people become food secure and self sufficient, a reliance on vitamin pills doesn't exactly help in the long term. As an aside, I find it funny how many people (not necessarily the parent poster, but a lot) who claim to support food security issues are quick to talk about keeping people in developing countries dependent on aid once the topic of GMOs that could help them comes up.

Comment Re:And hippies will protest it (Score 3, Informative) 396

Because the argument that GMOs are these evil terrible things that you should totally give us your money to fight is going to be a harder sell once you've got news stories talking about how they are saving the lives of children whose only crime was being born in the wrong part of the world. Golden Rice is a big deal to many in the anti-GMO movement, which just goes to show you how little the 'not anti-biotech just anti-Monsanto' line goes.

Comment Re:And hippies will protest it (Score 3, Insightful) 396

I'd like to hear your practical alternative then. Plant breeding and genetic engineering are not easy, and the deregulation process for GMO crops can cost millions of dollars. If you're volunteering to foot the bill, I'm sure we can do away with plant patents. In the meantime, at the end of this year Monsanto's first GE soybean patent expires, which is how I thought patents were supposed to work (as in, develop something, recoup R&D costs and make profit, invention falls to the public). Copyright my be fucked to high heaven, but this is looking like it works to me, so perhaps you could elucidate the flaw you perceive here.

Also, even non-GMO crops can be patented. Plant breeders and genetic engineers, surprisingly, don't like to work for free. Various stonefruit hybrids (pluots, nectaplums, and plumcots) are patented because they took decades of hard work to develop. The Honeycrisp apple, one of the most popular apples, recently went off patent. The royalties from it went to support the breeding program which later produced my favorite apple variety, the SnowSweet apple (the world might not have that apple without patents). There are patented pineapples (like the Mele Kalima variety, which is one of the most amazing fruits I've ever had) and pawpaws (like the Shenandoah variety) developed by very small operations simply to protect the developer's work. A lot of the ornamental and floriculture industry uses plant patents. So tell me, if if those of us in plant improvement cannot patent our work, what do you propose as a fair system for all?

Comment Re:Sorry but no. LA Times fell for a PR scam (Score 1) 179

Heh, even Glushko (the constructor of RD-170) himself couldn't believe that it was possible, that was the reason for the conflict with Korolyov. So Korolyov gave the engine development to an airplane engine designer who didn't know that it was impossible and NK-33 came out of this.

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