He invented something so he got a 18-year country-wide monopoly on the idea. What's the problem?
He invented a place on your computer desktop that you can click with a mouse and it will open a menu.
Genius, I tell you. Who would have ever thought something like that was possible?
But they didn't win, did they? If they didn't win, it's irrelevant.
So, you think it's "irrelevant" that this sacred GMO industry that you worship sued to block other companies from labeling their food as "GMO free"? You are truly a zealot. It wasn't about them trying to "prevent FUD". It was about them trying to block the free speech of people who don't use their products. And this is the industry to which you're willing to hand over the keys to our food supply?
I still don't see you providing any shred of evidence that there are proven human health concerns for GMOs.
For me, this is not about health concerns. If I was concerned about the food I eat, I wouldn't have had that burrito from the food cart lady with the prison tattoos this afternoon.
This is entirely political. It's a pro-consumer issue for me. The consumers are paying the bill for GMOs, so if they want, they should get to know what they're paying for. I'm not asking for a law to be passed, I'm asking for food companies to start labeling their products truthfully. And to stop with using lobbyists to influence the government to pass laws to keep consumers from knowing what they're buying. And consumers should continue to run from GMO products until the industry is willing to label their products with this one truthful fact.
And I want transparency in the patenting of basic foodstuffs, because that matters to me, and I'm the one paying the bill.
and he came up with the Start button, for which he holds the patent today.
Oh, how I hate our patent system.
If the customers "don't" get what they want, then buy the (likely overpriced) stuff labelled "GMO free"
I bet you didn't know that the GMO industry sued to prevent people from labeling their food "GMO free".
Face it, they just don't want you to know what you're buying.
Nutritional information and list of ingredients are *government mandated*.
But the kosher and halal designations are not. Nor is the word "delicious" in big letters or any of the other words on the label. When I walk into the grocery, why doesn't the sign above the corn say, "Roundup Corn 3 for $1"? If the wondrous, miraculous benefits of GMO foods really exist, why doesn't the GMO industry advertise that fact to the consumers?
And if you say "They can't, because there's so much FUD", then you should know that the only proper commercial response to FUD is exercising your freedom of speech to market your products in a positive manner. The answer to bad speech is more good speech, not doing everything you can to obfuscate what is a truthful statement: "This food is made from genetically modified organisms". I would also request that the patent be clearly marked on the label. I want to know if the basic foodstuffs I buy are patented. Or is that also information I should not be allowed to have?
If they had been declared legal persons, you know someone would've tried to marry one.
Too late.
If they are not legal persons, that makes them illegal persons. Right?
If they outlaw chimps, then only outlaws will have chimps.
The chimps need to band together and register as a corporation!
I think it's already been done.
Labelling them is arguably a "warning".
And arguably, it's truth in advertising.
There are labels of all sorts on food. There's a little "K" in a circle that means kosher and there's a symbol for Halal and there's labels that say "Grown in California" and "fresh" and "delicious". Those are not warnings.
There is nutritional information, there's a list of ingredients. If consumers want it, why not a simple little symbol that shows the food was grown from GM organisms?
Remember, it's the consumers that are paying for all the GMO research, for all the products, for all the salaries of all the scientists, for all the marketing and for the lobbyists trying to get the federal government to pass industry-friendly laws.
When an industry tries to get laws passed which are meant to make sure customers DON'T get what they want, it raises red flags.
The issue is significantly more nuanced than that. Most people, and certainly most biologists and behavioral experts agree that there are certain animals that demonstrate sentience in a fashion at least analogous to the way humans think and feel. The great apes, and chimps, in particular, are among that rather rare group who share a significant number of emotional and cognitive traits with humans (little wonder, we're only separated by a few million years of evolution). So the idea here, so far as I understand it, is that those similarities are significant enough that chimps should enjoy, if not human rights, then at least some rights elevated from other far less human animals.
I tend to weigh on the side that sentient animals should receive protections similar to the protections we give to children or to adults deemed legally incompetent. That means they can't exercise many of the rights that we recognize adult humans have, but neither can they be wantonly exploited, physically or psychologically harmed.
But to pursue this in the courts is ludicrous. Personhood is fairly well defined in most, if not all, jurisdictions and it pretty much explicitly excludes anyone who isn't a member of H. sapiens. This is going to need to be something that is dealt with at the legislative level, and it's going to be a long fight.
These guys are weaving a judicial tapestry that ensures that even if society as a whole were to move a bit in their direction over time, there will be so much precedent against them that it'll take decades longer to accomplish their goals.
uploads a supposedly-encrypted form of your wireless AP's password to a Microsoft server for safe-keeping
It's a bit hard to get outraged at MSFT when GOOG has been doing the exact same thing for the last three or four Android versions.
Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit.
