When you demand a citation try just Googling. It's faster and right there at your finger tips. It's there even if you're not lazy. I would not want to take the joy of learning and exploration away from you nor encourage your lazy tendencies so consider finding the citations as an exercise for your mind and path to self-improvement.

This is the goal. That will provide the platform, the OS so to speak, for then overlaying the data set which is the user's personality allowing us to transfer ourselves from a dying human organic body to a immortal machine body.

I should say immortal with the slight qualifier of, "until the manufacturers obsolescent you and fail to offer a forward path for your legacy data set." Bummer dude. You're out of date.

This is not a real problem.
Demand goes up.
Supply doesn't match demand.
Prices go up.
Demand adjusts downward to meet prices.
Simple market corrections.
This is not a real problem.

This reminds me of the cases where they used Curare for anesthesia. Turns out all it was doing was paralyzing the motor systems so the still fully conscious patients couldn't scream or otherwise react as the surgeons operated.

Might be a good idea to ask the octopuses afterwards if they remember from during the anesthetized time period. This can be done and would find out if they're really out cold or if they're just locked in.

What you see as random I see deeper causes. It is really not random. There are probability curves, but it's still not random.

Lighting is not nearly as random, or unlikely as people seem to think. We live along a lightning prone ridge where copper ore veins come to the surface. I can tell where not to stand, provided you want to live, and where to go if you want to get hit by lightning. One can feel the charges building. It is not random but rather physics.

I know very well what a hybrid is. I do genetics. Part of doing farming. I think you don't have much connection with the real topic. Theory only takes you so far.

What I'm seeing in many of the comments is a complete disconnect from the realities of farming. The farmers in Africa don't need Big Ag heavy iron intensive farming. They need small scale sustainable practices, seed stock and livestock that they can work with at low overheads without a whole lot of high tech and annual costs. Because people on SlashDot have become so disconnected from the land they don't tend to understand what small scale farming, the type done at the 4H level, really means. These aren't 10,000 acre wheat fields with dozens of huge combines. It's small scale. Different world. Sustainable. Reality. Something that will last through each collapse.

Yet just because it has become uncommon in Big Ag does not change how important and valid it is. Don't confuse the practices of the Big Ag producers with best practices. Small farmers are still doing selective breeding of their own stock, both plants and animals. I do. I now a lot of other farmers that do. It's a very common practice - just not at the Big Ag level.

I get the feeling you didn't actually read my original post carefully but instead just reacted based on your own emotional state having to do with other issues on your mind.

"Why is the farmer responsible for saving the best seed to improve the next generation instead of a big corporation?"

Simple: Vertical integration. The more I do as the farmer the more money that sticks to my palm rather than getting paid out to "Big Corporations" and out as taxes. Farmers use vertical integration for the exact same reasons Big Corporations use it - we improve our bottom line.

"Why shouldn't farmers best seeds possible"

And there's the quandary. You see the seed that I save and select over the generations is the BEST seed for my growing conditions, soils and management. The seed provided by Big Corp is designed to work with their pesticides and herbicides, their artificial fertilizers and equipment which the farmer must then buy into as well increasing the farmer's costs. Best does not mean the same thing in all situations. My seed stock, be it plant or animal, is far better than Big Corp's, for my situation. This also gives me control over my systems rather than putting me under the thumb of Big Corp.

"We don't expect farmers to build their own tractors"

Funny you should mention that because actually farmers tend to be engineers and inventors, often building machinery and systems for their own use. Farmers tend to be on that leading edge of technology while the big manufacturers like John Deere are producing for the masses. If a machine doesn't do what I need I either modify it or build my own. Standard Operating Procedure on many farms.

You and several of the other posters are demonstrating your disconnect with agriculture. We've been using hybrids for thousands of years. Hybrids are not new. Seed doesn't go bad using it year after year. Good selective breeding involves saving your best seed and stock to make the next generation and with each generation it gets better. Crossing to gain new traits is standard operating procedure.

Don't buy into the Big Ag mantra that you can't do this stuff yourself. It really isn't all that difficult.

You are demonstrating a classic lack of understanding about farming and agriculture. Reality is not the either or situation that you hypothesize.

In the real world we save our best seed and livestock year to year using that to grow the next generation. With each generation the plants and animals become more adapted, stronger and do better with the local conditions. The seed and livestock are free, other than having to save some back from the harvest. This is how we have traditionally improved our stock, both plants and animals, for thousands of years. It works without paying high prices for fancy seeds.

Thus the option is #0, which you completely neglected to consider.

Standard Operating Procedure on things that might be security risks or violate privacy is to have a time delay before the materials can be released under the Freedom of Information Act and typically heavy redaction. I can just see the delivery:

"Your request for the video will arrive in 30 years. The 10 billion seconds of video you requested will be redacted to all zeros for privacy and national security reasons. Since it will be MPEG compressed this will allow us to deliver in a single byte. Watch your email box. G'day."

Obviously they've finally found the cause of global warming! And it is all man kind's fault right to the core! Specifically the fault of the White Male [Republican | Democrat] majority!

Glad to get that all cleared up. Now we can go back to blowing our top and spouting nonsense like normal Vulcans.

That was incoherent.