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Comment Food Politics? (Score 1) 455

I hope this is not a sneaking attempt to force-feed us monopoly food. Like, you know, you get your full pay-cheque only if you eat this Monsanto-produced GM stuff. If you choose organic, we'll deduct 20%.

After all, this isn't Soviet Russia, where the govt. controls the megacorps!

- t.

Comment 123 profit! (Score 1) 151

Say corporations A, B & C have a certain market cornered, each owning 33% of it.

B is really a non-profit, being sustained by donations from A.

A's long-term goal is to drive C out of the market.

I am no game theorist, but common sense tells me that A should dispose of B later rather than sooner, since B is in its pocket anyway. Together, their 66% has a much better chance of taking over the other 33%.

Whereas if A first destroys B by withdrawing funding, then B's userbase is likely to bifurcate and go to A and C, in which case A's 50% would be fighting C's 50%, a much less advantageous situation than the first.

What I should do if I were A:

1. Keep sponsoring B, and together with it drive C out of the market
2. Withdraw funding from B, hopefully destroying it
3. Profit!

You know who A, B and C are.

Comment Re:GNOME has always been fucked up. (Score 1) 314

Good developers don't care for unnecessary licensing politics. They don't create software when there are perfectly fine alternatives they could use instead.

I have no idea about the Gnome development process or the community, so I won't comment on that specific point.

But if you're making the general statement that political ideology is unnecessary, and is mutually exclusive with technical skill, you may want to think again.

Writing the best code is an important goal, but don't you also need to think why and for whom you're coding? I'm sure you wouldn't want to think of yourself as a coding machine that mindlessly churns out the best code for whoever happens to own it. If you discern on that point, then you are already politically aware.

It is the hegemony of the have-s that makes some have-nots regard the politically motivated as zealots and lunatics.

Don't let them take you unawares, and turn you into their willing shill.


- t.

Comment Re:Wait a second... (Score 1) 521

As far as I know, there aren't too many actual horror stories about GM animals messing up ecosystems.

However, there are hundreds of years worth of horror stories from introducing some species of animal or plant to help control another bothersome species.

You want to continue till there are too many horror stories and ecosystems are fucked up?
GM technology hasn't had hundreds of years for us to observe the scale of its impact. If mankind continues to poke at the balance of ecosystems, you might just get your wish.

Comment Re:This guy ever been beaten up before? (Score 1) 566

You can read the autobiography of Mohandas Ghandi (a really wonderful book) and see the same patterns.

What people like Thoreau and Ghandi realized was

I heard this one time and I never forgot it. It is a saying of Ghandi's:

since you seem to be a fan, i'll request you to get his name right, else your quotes lose credibility. it's GANDHI, not GHANDI.

Comment Re:Deja vu much? (Score 1) 438

Slashdot article from June 2006: Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space Slashdot, August 2010: Abandon Earth Or Die, Warns Hawking Once, I would have written it off to deja vu and went on with my life. But the same article, 3 times? I might be human, but my memory is not that terrible, Slashdot!

Well, what can he do. He's been trying to warn us since 2006, but are we going? He'll keep repeating conscientiously every few years until we're gone.

Comment Re:Global Warming is Over! (Score 1) 569

There does not exist on earth more carbon than the earth can process.

All the carbon came from the earth. It was "processed" into the earth in the past after the living material was "done" with it.

you're being disingenuous. our planet is not a uniform, homogeneous body. the physical state and the location of carbon matters as much as, or even more than, its quantity. you wouldn't enjoy eating faeces or drinking urine, would you? yet those came from you, this morning.

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