04 Aug 2004
'Dead zone' spreads across Gulf of Mexico

Call it it high (and unnoticed) price of the "Green Revolution". It's only a matter of time before fisheries will be effected by this, and then I guess we'll have to decide if we'd rather have shrimp or wheat. Or both, if we move "backwards" to a sustainable model agriculture.

A huge "dead zone" of water so devoid of oxygen that sea life cannot live in it has spread across 5,800 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico this summer in what has become an annual occurrence caused by pollution.

(link) [CNN]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Apple settles with patent holder on iTunes

I'm ashamed of Apple and Microsoft for caving on this patent. But I'm sure they just wrote it off as a cost of doing business, never mind that the whole concept of the "business method patent" needs to be seriously challenged in court. I would offer companies that think they're doing themselves a favor by simply paying off their tormentors a bit of advice from a favorite poet:

We never pay anyone Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it lost!
                           --Rudyard Kipling

With Microsoft and Apple crossed off its list, E-Data sues Amazon, Ticketmaster and others.

(link) [CNET News.com]

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link