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Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

blog.cloudant.com

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Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#121

Post by kreek »

andylei wrote: post #84
kreek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1! If you want to learn more about this watch Food Inc. available on NetFlix streaming. If you have high blood pressure you may want to skip the part where an Indiana man explains how he was sued by Monsanto for inducing farmers to violate patents by seed cleaning - a practice utilized by farmers for thousands of years.

from what i understand, seed cleaning is part of a process to extract seeds from a harvested crop. monsanto did not sue that man for cleaning seeds, they sued that guy because he marketed his services to farmers using monsanto seeds, claiming that those farmers could extract seeds from their harvest to avoid buying more monsanto seeds. however, when you buy seeds from monsanto, you sign an explicit agreement saying t…

The main problem I have with Monsanto is that in many areas they are they only game in town. In some cases even following the rules will get you sued http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110927/01185716104/monsan... So yes Monsanto win most of their cases, it does not make them ethical.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#122

Post by nirvana »

ebaysucks wrote: post #4

Monsanto is one of those rare companies that is so fucked up that it is hated by both socialists and libertarians.

I know socialists hate it, because they hate capitalism. I don't think libertarians hate it, because they don't hate capitalism.

However, as libertarianism has become popular, more and more there are socialists (leftists, "democrats" and "liberals") who are deciding they are "libertarians" without understanding what libertarianism is.

Libertairans -- and this is what defines the movement-- are people who agree with the Non Aggression Principle. (aka NAP) In fact, to be a Libertarian Party Member, and get your card, you had to sign a pledge that you subscribed to the NAP.

Show us how Monsanto is violating the NAP, and a libertarian will agree that Monsanto should be held accountable for the crime.

Libertarianism isn't really so much about hating, or loving various companies. It is really about enforcing the NAP against anyone who would violate another's rights using violence.

Sometimes this includes companies as well, but we're pretty resistant to the piling on that a lot of people do. (e.g.: "I hate monsanto, therefore cloudand is evil").

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#123

Post by SkyMarshal »

andylei wrote: post #87
kongqiu wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an unfortunate sign for everyone that you (and/or Cloudant) wouldn't anticipate this reaction from going into business with Monsanto. As to the "content-free" claim, sometimes a rant is an appropriate reaction. If some YC company partnered with Al Qaida, would we really need to spell out all the heinous things AQ has done before writing, "F- that!"?!? EDIT: And to your "If the rule is, if x sells something to Mo…

the difference is that right now, you or anyone else in the thread can convincingly list a bunch of bad things they have done. so far, there is not a single convincing (and barely any substantive) comments about the bad things monsanto has done. if you disagree, please, let's discuss why monsanto is, as many here claim, "evil"

I don't have time to get into that discussion, but if you google "the most evil company in the world" you'll see they're fighting it out with De Beers and one or two others for the top spot. There's also plenty on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto

They're basically 80s/90s Microsoft at its worst, but in agriculture of both the developed and developing world (the latter being particularly heinous).

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#124

Post by mark_l_watson »

I really like BigCouch - a great open source project. Awesome, really.

That said, I think that Cloudant should have kept a low profile as far as bragging about a big deal with Monsanto, a company that I personally dislike more than any other corporation on this planet. Awful company!!

That said, I don't blame Cloudant for accepting the business, but they should have just put it in their Edgar SEC filings, and not done any press releases. I hope that they did not actively market Monsanto, and that Monsanto liked BigCouch and approached them. That would make it more palatable for me.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#125

Post by dagw »

davidandgoliath wrote: post #52
sitkack wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if I wanted to round out the mix I would add in BP Halliburton Xe Services (Blackwater Worldwide) The creation of roundup resistent crops is possibly the worst mistakes that the human race has ever made. It took what 3-5 years to make roundup impervious parasites? Terminator seeds that can't actually create a viable organism? You have to go back to the source (Monsanto) every year. Mono-cultures and engineere…

Missing the RIAA: Same scenario, different product. Though the key difference is Monsanto's evils are !@#$ing with our food supply / chain / system that's happily evolved over thousands of years as they sue farmers into oblivion. The RIAA is merely making 'big music' less important to the majority of us & shooting themselves in the foot in the process while suing their potential clientbase. Both very much similar, an…

RIAA isn't even in the same universe. You can certainly debate how many innocent lives Monsanto's,BP,Halliburton and Xe Services have on their concision, but I think it's safe to say that everybody agrees it's greater than zero. I doubt even the most rabid RIAA hater would try to argue that the RIAA had actual blood on their hands. RIAA fucks some bands out of money and use lawsuits to shake down people on dubious legal grounds, that's a far far cry from actually letting people die.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#126

Post by inconditus »

sitkack wrote: post #120
inconditus wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't be surprised to find Monsanto genetics having made its way into humans in 20 years. I don't know if you were joking, but I couldn't take you seriously after that.

> wouldn't be surprised. There is much we don't know. There are many processes of ongoing genetic transfer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer Next time ask for clarification.

I'm well aware of horizontal gene transfer, but thanks for linking it anyways for the people who don't know.

Edit: My response was lacking, apologies. AFAIK, there's never been a horizontal gene transfer from a prokaryote/eukaryote/any other kingdom to a mammal or animal. The last time may be when we got mitocondria.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#127

Post by nirvana »

irrumator wrote: post #63
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #12

Heh. I didn't know what to expect when I came here, but frankly I was a bit surprised to see the ethical implications of this deal weighed so heavily here. Not that I view the HN community as cut throat necessarily, but certainly often business oriented. Granted this was only posted an hour ago, but I will try to less judgementally provoke a discussion regarding ethics and startups... Is it wrong to even associate wi…

Agreed, I don't think I've ever seen so many 'fucks' and similar words used on an HN thread before. For some reason all these new posters are tying every company which they have a grudge against with Monsanto, and by association, with Cloudant. Amusing to read all the pent up angered comments, with any dissenting ones heavily downvoted. Did /r/politics arrive to stay? What happened here? Cloudant is providing an amaz…

I've been very curious about the persistence of anti-capitalists attitudes on Hacker News.

For me, one of the things that changed me from a liberal into a libertarian was starting businesses. Getting out there, trying to grow, dealing with government, and recognizing that I needed to learn finance, etc, caused me to get experience with how the business world works, and to also learn economics, and that was pretty much all she wrote.

Maybe Hacker News has a lot of overlap with the /r/politics demographic due to commonality in ages?

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#128

Post by dionidium »

tptacek wrote: post #99
dionidium wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is obviously possible for Monsanto GMO crops to end up in an unsuspecting farmer's field. But it's not possible for a farmer to accidentally use Roundup as an herbicide in that field. If they do that without paying Monsanto, they are trying to get something for nothing. That, to my understanding, is what's motivating the lawsuits. It's not necessary that the farmer derive any benefit from mis-use of Monsanto's IP…

In the most famous (only?) case taken to trial, the party accused of breaching Monsanto's IP was in fact using Roundup.

That's more or less true, but irrelevant. From the Wikipedia article linked elsewhere in this conversation:

Schmeiser's principal defense at trial was that as he had not applied Roundup herbicide to his canola he had not used the invention. This argument was rejected; the court said that the patent granted for the invention did not specify the use of Roundup as part of the invention, and thus there was no basis for introducing the requirement that Roundup had to be used in order for the invention to be used. That is, a patent prohibits unauthorized use of an invention in any manner, not merely unauthorized use for its intended purpose.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#129

Post by davidandgoliath »

davidandgoliath wrote: post #112
tptacek wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the most famous (only?) case taken to trial, the party accused of breaching Monsanto's IP was in fact using Roundup.

Nationwide review found that Monsanto has filed 90 lawsuits targeting 147 farmers & 39 small businesses since '97. Article from '05, assuming research was done up until then. Probably the sole one to go to trial & get significant bouts of attention. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2005-01-14/news/050114025... Here's a farmer that won though: http://www.percyschmeiser.com/ :)

"The ruling did increase the protection available to biotechnology companies in Canada, a situation which had been left open with the Harvard mouse decision, where it was determined that a "higher lifeform", such as an animal, or by extension a plant, cannot be patented. This put Canada at odds with the other G8 countries where the patent had been granted. In Monsanto vs. Schmeiser, it was determined that protection of a patented gene or cell extends to its presence in a whole plant, even while the plant itself, as a higher lifeform, cannot be patented. This majority view, based on the precedent of mechanical devices, was central to the Supreme Court's decision, and put the onus on the Canadian Parliament to make distinctions between machines and lifeforms as it saw fit."

Sure sounds like a win in comparison to the alternative.

"Schmeiser won a partial victory, where the court held that he did not have to pay Monsanto his profits from his 1998 crop, since the presence of the gene in his crops had not afforded him any advantage and he had made no profits on the crop that were attributable to the invention. The amount of profits at stake was relatively small, C$19,832, however by not having to pay damages, Schmeiser was also saved from having to pay Monsanto's legal bills, which amounted to several hundred thousand dollars and exceeded his own."

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#130

Post by nirvana »

pg wrote: post #70
oldstrangers wrote: post #2

Fuck Monsanto, and by association, fuck Cloudant. "We’ve been working with them for a few weeks now and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the partnership." Thrilled? I guess money is thrilling. "The data & reporting interfaces will be used across Monsanto and should be instrumental in the making of key business decisions." Key business decisions like which small farmer to sue into oblivion? Or what third world nation…

It's an unfortunate sign for HN when the top comment on a thread is such a content-free rant. If the rule is, if x sells something to Monsanto, fuck x, then what you're saying is fuck the entire corporate world, because I'm sure Monsanto buys Apple computers and Chevrolets and Clorox too. It's sort of ridiculous to hold Cloudant to a standard that essentially zero other companies meet. There are frequently inane comm…

I'm not alarmed because there seems to be two very distinct crowds of people who hang out on hacker news. "Startup people", like yourself, who are across the political spectrum, with probably a disproportionate number of libertarians (as compared to the broader population) and the /r/politics crowd which are very anti-capitalist, anti-innovation, pro-taxes, etc.

Some threads attract one crowd and the comments go one way, other threads attract the other crowd and the comments go the other way.

I really wish Hacker News was about startups, and if there was any debate, we were all capitalists debating it. I'm tired of the seemingly endless stream of leftist propaganda that gets promoted to the front page (e.g.: anything by Krugman, for example.) I'd hate this just as much if it were all rightest propaganda. IF it was balanced, I wouldn't like it, but it wouldn't be irritating.

When almost all the discussions are of one mindset, and posting something outside that mindset gets you down voted to oblivion, I feel like intellectual discussion is much more difficult. This isn't always the case here, obviously, but sometimes it is.

I don't really care for Amazon, but at least when Amazon is on the front page its because they did something relevant to the site. I can just ignore those threads. Amazon' announcing that they've got a new finger service in AWS doesn't add anything for me, but it doesn't detract like the political topics do.

Cloudant, a company that takes CouchDB and turns it into a dynamo style ring, has produced something significant in their platform. We should be talking about this.

Cloudant provides a very useful tool that should be very highly relevant to people who are doing startups.

The thing is, I suspect a major population of HN commenters aren't really doing startups or planning to.

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