The genes came from a bacteria called Agrobacterium tumefaciens

The genes aren't in a plant that 'nature chose', and genes are patentable "if they are sufficiently "isolated" from their naturally occurring states", i.e. manipulated to be expressed in an organism they aren't naturally found in, as was done with round-up ready soybeans.

Not that I like Monsanto, but they are within the law as currently written to patent their round up ready plants.

I have a very shitty connection, and it goes out all the time. If I've already got steam booted up, it's alright. If the connection goes out and THEN I try to boot steam, it won't work. So if you're one of those people who doesn't leave programs running in the background when you're not using them, steam's offline mode doesn't work.

And they most definitely don't want to get involved in a land war in Asia.

In his manifesto, Dorner states that there were several people on the board investigating the claim that were biased, an old partner, an old supervisor, etc. When he disputed this and asked for unbiased judges, he was ignored. I don't know whether this is true or not, but it is a believable claim.

That's the wrong way to use technology in teaching. I've had several classes where the profs managed to use technology in a way that enhances the learning process instead of hindering it. My biochem class had lectures the old school way that you described, they gave assigned reading out of the book/supplementary materials that they provided and the prof would just go through his lectures making notes/drawing diagrams/etc. The difference was they did the notes on a tablet that was projected for everyone to see, and the lectures were recorded, voice, notes, student questions and all (camtasia is awesome). Surprisingly, they still had a very high attendance rate, and most people went to class and just listened to what was being said and thinking about it instead of focusing on writing down every little piece of info that was said, and took notes off of the recordings later. Some of my other classes were taught by a couple profs who were collaborating with an education researcher on how to improve modern teaching. Everyone had a cheap little $5 remote that that was tied to a receiver that the profs had, and they would ask questions every 5-10 minutes in class to see how well the students were grasping the concepts and if they needed to go over anything again (even at a college level, there were still plenty of people who either thought they understood something when they didn't, or were just too shy to stop class to ask the prof to go over it again). Again, their lectures were pretty old school. They had a slideshow with the basic concepts they were going over, but did most of their teaching on a blackboard with chalk. I had other classes where the profs did pretty much what you described, and had a slideshow that they just read off. Those were the classes that I only went to for the test. So to implement helpful technology, the profs don't have to change their teaching methods. They can add technology to their tried-and-true methods that help the students instead of just making a huge hassle for everyone involved with little benefit.

"because whatever else abortion and gay marriage are, they are most certainly not multi-generational survival traits" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080617204459.htm Proof you're wrong, at least on the gay part.

I'm not worried about google mining my data at all, since before they implemented their latest way to look at what they think about your demographics (http://t.co/hSxzJaPf), you could get in and look at a more detailed breakdown of what they were using to target ads to you. They thought I was a 60+ year old divorced christian man, with a job in IT and interests in paleontology, astrology (NOT astronomy), and looking new wife. The only things they got right were that I am a man and think dinosaurs are cool (but not to the extent that they thought). At the time, I was 20, in college for microbiology, atheist, and in a relationship. What I think is hilarious is I TOLD them I was 20 and in school, and they still ignored it. Most of the ads I saw were for dating sites for old christian women.

Semi-off topic: Could it still be considered a copyright violation? They are using someone else's work for monetary gain (I'm assuming they make some money off of their service), so shouldn't people created the works be able to object to that, or is there something in copyright law that allows the plagiarism screening services to do that?

Once the smartphone revolution started to happen, AT&T started trying to screw me over on data. I had one of the free bricks that they give you when you're not willing to spend any money on a phone, and was on a family plan. I kept getting data charges from them, despite never using data, or even being able to, although a call would get the charges reversed. One month I just left my phone plugged in, but never used it. At the end of the month, guess what happened? Got charged for using data. AT&T just adds on whatever charges that most people incur and hope that people don't notice it, or the people DO use it and just think they've been caught.

This summary might be the worst I've ever seen on /. The summary cut off Obama's quote right before it got to what he was actually saying, and replaced it with another quote that was the complete opposite of the point he was trying to get across. In the link to Obama's speech, he says he wants international students to keep coming here and we should try to keep them here once they're done with their education by making immigration a viable option, rather than deporting them as soon as they are done. The summary makes it sound like Obama was saying that we need to cut back on international students, while it's the exact opposite.

Every closed beta I've been involved with has been 'closed' because it was open to limited numbers of people, not because there was some non-disclosure clause in the EULA. Most of them WANTED you to talk about it in public forums, since that's free advertising and when reviews talk about all the problems in the beta, the devs point to those and say 'hey, we fixed all that, any other complaints that aren't actually fixed?'

Lets be serious, the FAQ on how to remove the safety mechanism would probably be out before that model of weapon was even officially announced.

That's when you adjust the mouse sensitivity. That will do a lot more to help a person with poor fine-motor control on a smaller screen than a touch interface will. You can set it so that you have to move your mouse 2 feet to get it across the screen, while a 10 inch tablet/laptop hybrid with small icons restricts you to those 10 inches.

If people have to argue about whether he used an assault rifle or handguns, then people being upset about assault rifles is irrelevant since he could have done the same damage with just the handguns. It's just a distraction from the real issues, whatever you believe them to be.

Most people who live in rural areas would gladly pay more for almost any service that's up to par, whether it's phone, internet, or cell coverage. The problem is it isn't available. I live not too far out of a decent sized city (for a rural area), and there's no cell coverage or internet available at my house (apart from unreliable dial up, which these days doesn't really count since doing anything on the internet besides browsing text sites requires a faster connection). The issue isn't subsidizing rural areas to cover the cost, it's the companies who have been granted special privileges to provide service to everyone aren't providing service to everyone.