We all need to ostracize and refuse to have anything to do with any of these people. Looking to hire a subcontractor, and one of the firms in the running has connections to these people? Knock them out of the running and let them and their competitors know why. If we tag and track all of them and make them effectively persona non grata everywhere, and those who do their bidding likewise persona non grata, then we would begin to see change.

Society in general must excise these people or risk imploding catastrophically.

"this rice is targeted" -> "this rice trial is targeted"

Domestic consumption as in the rice would be predominantly eaten in the country that grew it to alleviate vitamin A and other mineral deficiencies. Note that this rice is targeted for the Philippines and from TFA mention was made of cassava and sweet potatoes for other countries. So it doesn't follow it would be "forcing them to grow cash crops to export" since it's unlikely that was ever the intention.

I assume this rice given its properties was largely developed for domestic consumption so I don't see that your point is valid.

They haven't "patented life" they have patented one way of countless of increasing the vitamin & iron content of a staple food. If countries don't want to pay a corp which has put millions, possibly billions into developing this crop with the reasonable expectation of profit then they should develop their own alternative or provide their population with education and supplements that they don't go blind or die.

India obviously has the odd loose billion given they've just built a nuclear sub.

Or just pay the going rate and wait for the patent to expire.

Owned for 20 years, or 12 million alive and 10 million sighted children if you prefer. Then anybody can do what they like with the patent. It also doesn't stop some rival from producing a crop with equivalent properties expressed through some other means.

The UK had people on the ballot representing the Conversative Party and the Literal Democrats. One Liberal candidate euro election lost by a margin less than the number who voted for the Literal Democrats. So the UK changed the system so that political parties had to be registered with a name unlikely to cause confusion with other registered parties, otherwise the candidate could only stand as an independent rather than for a party.

You would have saved yourself a lot of typing if you read the second half of my post. i.e. for people who don't know the sales person can guide them.

I don't see why big tobacco would be against e-cigs. They can sidestep all the tobacco regulation and sell a product the way they used to before the health warnings, taxes and regulation came in. At least for a little while any way.

The problem at this moment is they are being sold as a glamorous replacement for conventional cigarettes. Sexy people looking cool with their e-cigarette in their hands, attractive packaging, celebrity endorsements and all the rest. It's quite obvious they are being promoted much the same way cigarettes used to be as a lifestyle thing not as a smoking cessation product. From a marketing perspective this makes sense - the product is addictive and companies want their marketshare to grow, not be self-limited. But it's not acceptable from a public health perspective.

I think e-cigarettes *could* be as good as nicotine patches for smoking cessation *if* they were promoted and regulated in the same way. But they're not. At least not yet. I expect most countries will crack down on them in due course.

Wow that's very civic minded of you.

Sure but now you're paying for 2 libraries.

Because that sure would be handy when I'm coming up to an intersection or within range of a known traffic camera so that my plate can toggle to the governor's personal license plate number or that guy from accounting I don't like.

Hogwash. Pretty much everyone who buys a smart phone knows at least if its an iPhone, a Windows Phone or an Android phone. And even if they are completely ignorant they can be guided by the salesman to the platforms which has the "most apps" on it. It is quite obvious that Android would have been a better fit for Nokia.

Your shouts of bullshit might have more resonance if not for the fact that Nokia lost money hand over fist and just got bought up by Microsoft.

As for Android, it's a very simple thing to understand - people want Android. A phone which doesn't provide Android compatibility is in serious trouble. Nokia could have provided plenty of value add to attract people to its phones over the opposition. It could have provided a Symbian compatibility runtime for legacy users, enterprise functionality for corps, offline satnav & maps and of course its hardware. All while letting people run the same apps as other handsets.

They didn't do this and they suffered the consequences.