GreyEyedGhost

Okay, but what does any of that have to do with Meta?

NASA spent more than that on the Shuttle program alone, and we got 135 launches and a dozen dead astronauts, so that is demonstrably false.

NASA is great, and did a lot of great things. We also got a lot of great technology (and some questionable shoes) because of it. But NASA suffers from the same thing Blue Origin does, bureaucracy and a top-down attitude with respect to developing technology. (They also suffered from a lot of government pork.) It’s a good system for developing new things from scratch with a clear goal, but it rarely works well for taking existing technology and wringing the most effectiveness you can out of it.

Besides all this, the shuttle program suffered from ties to the military, which put in expensive requirements that didn’t help the whole thing, either.

If NASA got out of the rocket launching business and contracted out that part of their mandate to others, they would have a lot more money to spend on other things, such as research, both pure and practical.

You should read the saga of when MS bought Hotmail. The work they had to do to be able to run it on Windows was incredible. It actually helped MS improve their server OS, and it still wasn’t as performance when they switched over.

Not everything, and not now. As per the article, these laws have been in place since the 90s, and there are seeds, etc. that aren’t covered.

Thanks for the insight. I’m concerned about regulatory capture, much like in the wireless market. That would absolutely have a negative impact on the royalties for farmers, but producing hybrids still isn’t cheap. I can see where both sides have some valid arguments, and hope the government comes to a reasonable conclusion. If they don’t, I hope the farmers vote with their wallets for the sake of all of us.

Yeah, I get that, but keep in mind the case everyone refers to is a little more complicated than that. More like:

1. Protect the IP protected seeds genomes.

2. Have people save seeds from fields that have experienced blowover.

3. Use pesticides to kill off non-resistaseeplants from those saved seeds.

4. Repeat a few seasons.

5. Get the crap sued out of you for having knowingly bred for the pesticide resistant genes in your IP.

Now, I’m not saying this isn’t shitty of Monsanto, but that still has no bearing on the economics for the farmer. If he can produce a better outcome for the dollar, perhaps it makes sense to go thenroute of buying IP-protected seeds. I can only assume this is true, or a lot more farmers would reject those seeds. Also, if the price gets too high, the non-IP plants will become more financially attractive and farmers would turn to them. Hence why I say I’m not equipped to say what makes more sense for them, but it’s not a place I’d willingly put myself into.

Sex education isn’t pornography, and as a general rule depictions of nude people isn’t sufficient to be considered pornography. Moreover, comprehensive sex education has a strong correlation with reduced teen pregnancy. The only reasonable conclusions that can be drawn from that is that sex education isn’t required for teens to have sex, and that sex education increases the odds that teenagers will engage in safe sex rather than unsafe sex.

There are two rules you need to know in negotiations. First, never lay all your cards on the table.

This is primarily targeted towards patented or similarly IP protected seeds, with the intent of making them more profitable for the seed developer so they will produce new varieties. How this will work with commercial farmers is a question I’m not equipped to answer, but on a personal level, this is a good reason to be conscientious about buying heritage and open source seeds.

Indefensible and worthless. Barren land is often easier to build in than destroyed infrastructure. It’s not great for Ukraine, but having Russia use resources to get something of little or no value is of strategic value for Ukraine. Far better than giving them intact infrastructure.