I am Appalled at the lack of art knowledge at Slashdot! Certainly camera obscura has been know for centuries but many artists can do as well without it. In second grade, I had a friend with who could copy any picture by hand from memory. He had a game where he would see how long it would take for someone to figure out which picture it was while he drew the lines randomly. He had a photographic memory and the ability to freehand a straight line or circle. . . . Now he's a dentist.

Considering some farm animals can convert two pounds of feed into more than a pound of food, a 60% savings means that 0.8 pounds of feed could become a pound of feed. It's as plausible as a perpetual motion machine. Besides, where I live, most of the cattle graze on grass, which I can't digest.

This is another example of Program Suicide, which has been responsible for so many Big Projects programs being killed. When the budget gets tight, the leaders of different sections of the program start fighting for resources. They start campaigning for allies outside the program, who in turn use the in-fighting to as an excuse to have the program cut. In this case, NASA as a whole is committing suicide. Manned vs. Robotic programs, Inner planets vs. Outer planets, missions vs. research. Add to this the groups pushing commercial space vs. NASA, and the whole U.S. space program is killing itself. There are a lot of groups that want NASA's money and the space community is helping those groups to get it. If we kill the space program this way, we deserve the consequences!

If his team is contracted to a larger organization, they may have people who can help. Some government organizations have independent support groups and research centers that can review your project and give advice. For instance, NASA has an IV&V group in West Virginia.

A tool won't do you any good if you don't use it. You should look for tools that fit your team's culture. If you can afford the time to do it, pick the tools that look the most promising to your team and give them a trial run. It's hard to beat actual experience with the tools and the supporting processes. I understand that this costs time and other resources but the commitment to a toolset/process will be more expensive, especially if you choose one that you can't live with. That also applies to not not getting anything. The tool that works for one project or team does not necessarily work for the next.

My point was that it would only make sense for high value crops. Truffles? Saffron?

I should have ended with a smiley. I think the guys at Columbia have been spending too much time smoking something.

8-)