I just checked and I'm running Version 23.0.1271.91 m

WTF?

You had me interested, but my Google-fu couldn't dig anything up. Do you remember any of the other ingredients in the paste? I might give it a try with a chicken first, but if it works treat the family at Christmas.

This slashdotter thinks you shouldn't let your SO represent you in any legal matters ;-)

The owner (or renter) of the property is not at issue here. If, say, your state had a requirement that all students had to complete 100 hours of community service to graduate, and that they had to wear an RFID tag while doing that service work, it would be exactly the same situation wherever the community service took place.

The issue is the extent to which a public school system can enforce the surrender of some of your privacy and freedoms. Your child must attend a school or be homeschooled, and for almost all families the only option that makes sense is to enroll your child in the public school suggested / mandated by the school board. Given that we, the people, have decided that you are all but required by law to send your children to this school, we the people are well advised to tread extremely carefully in reducing the rights of you and your child any further. Whether this case is an acceptable infringement is up for debate, and the argument needs to include a review of the benefits to individual students, the collective student body and the school administration. Personally I doubt it would pass my internal bar for acceptable, but I haven't heard all the arguments.

Thanks for replying. I agree with you, and that seems to be what is happening, although there's a lot of debate about implementation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade_coffee. Off topic, my interest in the area came from a time when I was living and working in Aceh, but happened to be in a Costco in a place called Tsawwassen, outside Vancouver BC. They had a promotional display in the middle of one area, with a young woman offering a variety of Fair Trade coffees on sale, including a Sumatra decaffeinated one. I said that I would take one like that if they had with caffeine, adding that I lived in Sumatra. Young, white, very Canadian woman in the booth said she'd been there.

• I don't think so, I said.
• Yes, she said -- I was in Aceh.
• I live in Aceh, says I, I don't think you've been there.
• Yes, she replies, I was in Takemku... Takenku...Takengku...
• Takengon? I ask, shocked
• That's it! she cries
• Holy shit. I'm having a conversation in Costco about a hilltop town 10,000 miles away that almost nobody else on the planet has been to

You've come very close to hitting the mark. Porter writes about the real world of business, where few businesses are in a pure competitive market, but more likely an oligopoly. The key point for this discussion is the four-way dynamic you mention -- the bargaining power between poor farmers and middlemen has traditionally been very lopsided in favour of the middlemen. If the origin of the coffee becomes marketable, the balance becomes more equal and the farmers become less poor. This has worked elsewhere. Registering a trademark isn't enough on itself, though, you need resources to knock down scumbags who try to sell lower-quality coffee with your trademark on it or customers will not return.

Nice rant. In many cases I'd agree with what you're saying, stripped of hyperbole. But in this case, asserting trademark rights (intellectual property) is a way to protect the poor coffee farmers. If they want to grow their traditional coffee, or grow "Fair Trade" coffee in a more sustainable manner, they need the protection of a trademark, or some cheap low-life grower from somewhere else will start marketing "Tanzania" coffee with a lousy taste, killing off their future sales, and perhaps their wives and children. IP is exactly what these farmers need to grow their business, and perhaps to survive (I don't know Tanzania).

I live in Indonesia, and I share your experience of the taste. Mind you I've never paid for it myself: this being one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and a lack of certification, suggests that they just grab any reasonably good bunch of beans and label 'em "kopi luwak."

I agree with you also on Toraja, my usual choice, and also Mandeheleng (North Sumatra). Acehnese can be the best, but not if it's processed in Aceh, where they burn the shit out of the beans while roasting (on topic of this thread, there must be a pun there but I can't see it). Java arabica is also very good, but they grow a lot more robusta than arabica so getting the right brand is important.

Returning to the more general topic, since branding is so important in something like this, I'm going to agree with the WIPO and say that this is a rare example of good IP protection. Having the right trademarks protected, whether "Fair Trade" for those who like it, or at least brand names, does protect consumers and producers who have bothered to invest in good techniques.

Maybe not the walnuts themselves, but the pattern is emerging... Maple Syrup, Walnuts, next we'll see sugar missing, then cream. Look for a back-of-the-woods monster ice cream maker and someone's gonna corner the market on maple walnut ice cream, one of my favorites. Won't someone think of the children...

I don't want to defend the authors, but Foxconn did recently admit that some of it vocational interns were 14 - 16 years old. It was on the BBC, among others.

Citation needed. Here's the description of the site: http://www.wise-uranium.org/edusa.html#GORE (11-14 acres) and here's what I could find on the reclamation: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/gore.htm. In fact that link uses the exact words you used, which leads me to believe you have read it. It also says, in the same fucking article, that "The total radiological and hazardous waste volume is estimated to be 141,600-311,520 m3 (5-11 million ft3)." I leave it as an exercise to get the density of your material using these numbers and find something on earth that dense. The latter site does mention that they have a licence to "possess" up to 20 million tons of stuff including groundwater.

In fact, do you have the foggiest notion of what 20 million tons is? Assuming a density of 5 tons per cubic meter (rough approximation, within one order of magnitude) that's 4 million cubic meters. Since I bothered to google, I know that the area where the waste will be stored is 11 to 14 acres, or around 4.5 hectares. 4 million cubic meters over 45,000 square meters is about 900 meters tall. So tell me, is your claim bullshit or are they building a mountain of contaminated material?

I hope the numbers aren't hype. I also hope they include a reasonable estimate of the cost of using what might be a pretty expensive machine. Having said all that, the article looks at least credible and certainly interesting. Everything we can do to make healthy (plumbing and concrete floor) and long-lived (strong and earthquake resistant) housing for near-poor households in developing countries helps stop them slipping back into poverty. The potential impact on huge numbers of people could be very important.

And, yeah, a machine to build moon colony houses is very cool too.

Why not get the original article, not two removed: http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/7/3225714/samsung-accuses-apple-tampering-with-evidence

I'm not sure about this, but I'm not an expert. I do recall reports of people getting pot or other drugs laced with PCP (a horse tranquilizer, IIRC) and completely losing self control, and becoming very aggressive. If the reports of cannibalism after ingestion of "bath salts" are true, that can't be only a result of reduced inhibition.

Now that's one of the most thought-provoking things I've read here, or elsewhere, for quite a while. Thank you for that.