It doesn't *have* to be done. There's a gigantic number of seeds which are commercially available already, there's many government and private organizations safeguarding these seeds, and the amount of patented seeds is comparatively insignificant. In addition, modern farming operations don't save seeds for future crops.

In fact, the basic idea behind Monsanto controlling the seed supply has been standard industry practice for 50+ years. Most vegetables commercially grown are F1 hybrids. In 1960, 99% of corn grown was an F1 hybrid. If you buy a Better Boy Tomato, an F1 hybrid also popular for home gardening, there will be little variation between the plants grown. However, the seed from these plants will be unusable. Peas and beans pollinate their own flowers, so for these plants such a strategy isn't practical. However, that doesn't mean the death of the species - even if most commercially grown tomatoes are F1 hybrids where the seeds are unusable, of course there's still a million variety of tomatoes which may be planted from seed (with a little care) and are easily available.

This is a symbolic marketing/propaganda move against Monsanto. Monsanto developed a soybean that is invulnerable to the safe, cheap, and environmentally benign herbicide Round-Up. They sell seeds with a contract stipulation that the seeds not be re-sown (again, normal farming practice is to buy all seed anyway), and won a lawsuit against a farmer who intentionally grow a Monsanto crop without paying Monsanto- he would buy the Monsanto crop for the first planting of the year, and use saved seed for the second planting of the year.

This group imagines that it's hard to find seeds that aren't patented, or at least that it will be in the future, to make some point that you shouldn't be allowed to patent seeds because think of how horrible it would be if you needed to deal with Monsanto to plant a carrot. However, if that future does come to pass, this wouldn't really help - you'd need something with the infrastructure to supply huge amounts of seeds, not just supply fun little seed packets to home gardeners.

Right now, the three most pirated games on piratebay are goatsimulator, Minecraft, and Sims 3. Goat Simulator is $10 off steam (very easy), Sims3 is $20 off steam (very easy) Minecraft is any easy purchase as well. What do you want, it's $1 and they mail the DVD to your house on a silk pillowcase?

People are willing to spend $2000 on a gaming PC and then will pirate a $30 piece of software, so obviously these are people who are willing to pay for games on some level...the idea that nobody pirates as an alternative to buying strikes me as ludicrous, because the people who are most into piracy today are the sort of people who spent all their money on computer games a decade ago.

And it's believable to me that if all "Game of Thrones" torrents became unavailable, more than a few people would be motivated to subscribe to HBO.

I thought Windows 8.1 was the defecto standard.

I know Slashdotters are a bunch of nerds who got bullied hard and now want their revenge. But what did the judge do wrong? Recording private conversations is illegal and frankly I am glad that I can have a private conversation and not have it used against me in a court of law.

So if the evidence against the bullies was illegally gathered, it simply shouldn't be usable. It's like, if the cops beat up a suspect and he confesses to a murder, I agree that also shouldn't be used against the subject. Because it's important not to have cops beat people up to get confessions, just as it's important that we don't live in some surveillance state where everything we say is recorded and then used against us.

I'm sure the school is anti-bullying and would have offered some help if the boy had directly asked for it. However they don't go along with setting up wiretaps, and good for them.

Freedombox has a wikipedia page, and seems to want to place Facebooking/email/all your communications on an independent private server that only let you communicate with other people who have freedomboxes.

Maybe if they can put this on a machine that costs $5 and requires 5 minutes (or less) of setup it will actually go somewhere. As it is, it's like being the only person you know to own a videophone.

Plenty of futurists imagined watches that functioned as one-way radios or one-way TVs.

Short of a two-way radio, I can't think of anybody imagining a wristwatch would be a great way to create content.

The best graphics are generally on PC games that were originally developed for consoles. Computer-only releases are generally MMORPGs or indie games, which tend to have worse graphics.

Film: Not popularized by porn
TV: Not popularized by porn
8mm movies: Not popularized by porn
VCRs: Not popularized by Porn
Beta: Yes it also had porn just as much as VHS
Video Games Machines: Not popularized by porn
DVDs: Not popularized by porn
Online Streaming Video: Not popularized by porn
Blu-Rays: Not popularized by porn
Bittorrent pirating: Not popularized by porn
Streaming Devices: Not popularized by porn (are there even any legit porn channels, at all, for any device?)

Porn was basically the only thing to use the multi-angle feature on DVDs, so there is that.

You stay away from my nanna

After 10 years and massive popularity, Youtube is a great place for cat videos. Bittorrent is a great place for stealing "Game of Thrones." If anything like what you're talking about happens, it's far in the future with some entirely new technological basis.

You're confusing Anne Frank and Hellen Keller jokes.

Actually, Plex for Amazon Fire is only $1. Personally I have a Roku and Plex is what I use it for 90% of the time, for streaming media that I have locally on my network.

I remember "fuck you Burning Man" parties in the year 2000...

I don't see the issue. Amazon.ca isn't selling the device. Canada's population is about 1/10th of the USA, it's less affluent, and streaming services are less common, so it's not like American devices need the Canadian market to succeed. There are a million devices that are initially released in only one country, this will make it one million and one.

I'm sure Amazon would love to make more money, if this does well and if Canadian streaming services get larger they will probably sell this in Canada.