Just don't upgrade?

Yeah me too, though honestly there are a million little customizable web portals out there.

I suspect this is what happens. Scientists rarely write a new grant entirely from scratch.

I guess they keep fining MS so they won't have to prosecute any other trusts.

Luckily there is no monopolistic dominance in other sectors like banking or finance.

The combine costs a lot more than $120k.

But farmers are not dumb. They have done these calculations. Monsanto seeds do not require greater long-term expense. It is no problem to quit using Monsanto's seeds if the costs are too high. You are not "locked in" to Monsanto's product. Many farmers can and do plant non-GMO seeds and if you've seen the prices of "organic" corn and soybeans you will know you can make money doing this.

If Monsanto's seeds quit being worth the money to plant, farmers would quit planting them.

It is not analogous to say buying MS products for your business. With those you do get locked-in when your Exchange server won't migrate out to a FOSS alternative. Or when your Oracle database system won't export to new products.

With farming though, all you have to do is buy different seeds next year.

Also, many people don't know this, FARMERS (by and large) DO NOT SAVE SEEDS.

Even the non GMO seeds are hybrids with enhanced vigor. If you saved the seeds the "hybrid-vigor" (google that) would not persist. This is not due to scheming by seed companies, this is just how genetics works.

Some people get so into the idea that Monsanto is evil that they forget to think if they are actually making a good product.

Good luck getting other countries to sign onto this. There are already UN treaties about space-based weaponry. No one is going to put up with a country having giant orbital lasers which could just as easily vaporize large metropolitan areas as they could space rocks.

What they are really afraid of is the fact that once cars become self-driving, no one will need to own one anymore.

Technology is actually upended the business model of the entire autoindustry. They might innovate themselves right out of business.

I mean seriously who cares about cloudplayer in a self-driving car? If it can drive itself I'll just leave my earbuds in.

The most common vehicle in 10 years will be the autonomous Dodge caravan, taxiing us all around. Rich people will have maybe their own auto-Bently's or something, but the rest of us will just share a car.

There are lots of non GM soybeans around and they are cheap.

Why do famers buy expensive GM seeds then?

Because they are better. You make more money when you plant GM seed.

Farmers are not dumb.

The software I have written for my odd specialized purposes is similar to the software my colleagues write: It's spaghetti code written with custom libraries which are not better than common ones and it has no documentation at all.

We could open-source it, but then you'd just bitch about how poorly its constructed.

We don't have time to open-source our code. Heck, I've had people ask to use software I've made and I've regretted giving it to them because I then am obligated to explain to them how to use it.

Don't tell me what's important for me you arrogant twat.

How about "animals including humans"?

If companies had a hard time finding skilled employees you'd expect wages to be rising, and they aren't.

What CEOs mean when they say this is "We can't find skilled, educated employees who will work for pennies."

Bitcoin has a built in limit and a built in "profitability scale" for its mining. The faster you mine the less profitable it is. Unless you could jump WAAAY ahead of the curve (as some early adopters did) you won't be able to make money mining.

Bitcoin needs people to spend it, not mine it, and thats a difficult problem which can't be solved without top-down (gov't) influence. People have to psychologically learn to accept bitcoins, and that wont happen unless they are made to.

There are a lot of benefits to bitcoins, but I think they will remain an, at-most, black-market currency.

Answered my own question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVRgIXLWDHs

Since this thread is just going to be a bunch of "zomg wasted muney!" why don't you educate academics like me about what exactly "ERP" systems are and what you do with it and why its so great?

The university I work at gets new crazy "enterprise" software sometimes and usually it ends up offloading some of the work the bureaucrats used to do on me (purchasing paperwork) meanwhile they take 51% of my grant money.

So tell me, WHY?