We already have a cheap and plentiful food supply.

if you think otherwise then you are highly uniformed MORON.

We have been letting food ROT in this country in order to prop up commodity prices since before you were even born. That's just the stuff that actually gets harvested. Some of it doesn't even make it out of the fields because it doesn't meet stringent packaging guidelines.

> There is no scientific difference.

If that were really true then there would be no value perceived in the "newer" alternative. The fact that these differences do exist despite the shrill attempts of "science fanboys" to say otherwise is why megacorps want to use these methods. At best they are a short cut. At worst, they convey unusual monopoly powers.

There are very important legal ones.

One allows your favorite megacorp to strip me of my personal property rights. The other one does not.

Who cares if it can make money or not. That is simply not the correct metric to judge whether or not a certain type of patent (or other thing) should be allowed. We should not suddenly re-align all of our interests merely to pander to the desires of a few large megacorporations.

Our society is simply not driven by the need for Monsanto to make a buck.

Kind of but not really. The North would have happily gone on with pretty much whatever the South wanted. The South just managed to not get it's way "exactly" just once and they had a collective hysterical hissy fit over it. In truth it was probably an unnecessary confrontation. Genuine abolitionists were an extremist minority in the North and most people everywhere were incredibly racist. For the first half of the war, the Union generals would have happily allowed the South to come back into the Union without any changes to the status quo. Eventually slavery became a military strategic issue and was attacked primarily for that reason.

It was ultimately really just an unnecessary temper tantrum.

Some of us get out plenty.

You're just repeating a variation of the Microsoft fallacy. No. Not everything is total crap. You can escape the crapulence by finding a better option and staying away from the obvious crap.

Not all companies are the same.

You seem jealous and butthurt that some of us have managed to avoid whatever torment you've brought upon yourself.

Nope.

Beaurocracies scale poorly. ALL of them do. This includes corporations. The larger the corporation, the more BS you're going to have to deal with. The larger the corporation, the more likely you will have to put up with "HR professionals". Them filtering out good candidates for no good reason is just the tip of the iceberg really.

I've never encountered a 3rd party plugin for Excel at any company I've ever worked for.

Most people simply don't use it that hard.

If your DBA can't pick up new "MSO skills" on an as needed basis, they aren't competent to be your DBA.

This is not a front desk receptionist position we're talking about here.

The HR staff isn't competent to determine what the technical candidate is capable of. That's rather the whole point of this sub-thread.

Nope. SQL Server is still not Office. The two have nothing to do with each other. The fact that your DBA candidate doesn't waste time or space on something as trivial as a spreadsheet app should not be held against him.

Again. Time clean out the HR department.

Well, at least we have something that's not just pulled from the nether regions of whatever judge happens to be deciding a case. In a forum full of IT geeks, it should really not be controversial that there should be well documented policies and procedures and that you should actualy follow them.

> This attitude of piracy hasn't helped anything whatsoever. Before piracy, we had Trent Reznors, Joe Satriani, and many other good artists promoted.

If you think that "piracy" and "freeloading" are anything new then you're an idiot. Perhaps you're just some cluless tweener that's simply too young to have experienced the world "pre internet".

Entire sub-genres of music only got a foothold through rampant piracy before relevant gatekeepers decided to relent.

The idea of new bands being put through the meat grinder paying their dues is also nothing new. I guess they just whined about it less and just stuck it out.

The only people that would think such a thing is silly are people that are completly ignorant of military history. Even recent history is littered with examples of the biggest military machine on the planet (and it's cronies) having much more trouble with "inferior" forces than they should.

"But you can't attack that tank with what you have."

Spoken like someone that never actually had any sort of military training.

It's still the same now. An enthusiast that buys his own weapon likely has a much better piece of equipment than someone that just has standard issue gear.

There are even catalogs used by the troops for enhancing their own personal gear while on personal deployment.

Of course. Just like with "gun control", there will be exceptions carved out for the elites and government. In the end, an ample supply will still remain in society and the problem won't actually really be solved. You'll just disarm more of the responsible types.

This was a formerly "legit" armoured car tha got retired and surplussed out into some "normal civilians" hands.