[kongqiu]

There's a place in civilized, rational discussion for ranting.

Let's say you're out with two friends discussing the war on drugs, with all kinds of rational, civilized debate on the science, politics, economics, sociology, etc. Suddenly, one friend declares, "Ok, I understand the risks and potential rewards, and I've decided to start dealing coke." Sure, you can try to calmly talk them out of it, and/or you could do some "ranting." Both would be appropriate.

"Hivemind" indeed.

[irrumator]

If we can quit the absurd analogies all over this thread for a minute, can you point me to why Monsanto is so evil in your eyes? Other than a Vanity piece, it seems everyone has come to a preconcluded fact that Monsanto is "evil" somehow.

Cloudant is a business, and this is great for their financials, as well as for furthering the research in their tech stack. From reading it, I'm sure many on Hacker News use similar tools that will benefit from the research done by Cloudant.

[chrisbennet]

The documentary "Food Inc" describes Monsanto's behavior with respect to genetically modified seeds.

Example from my admittedly poor memory: A farmer's neighbor bought Monsanto's genetically modified seeds and some of the seeds blew into the farmers flield. Monsanto sued him and made him destroy all his seeds. When the farmer complained to the government he discover that the official responsible for representing his interests was on the board of Monsanto.

As far as "feeding the hungry". Monsantos seeds are genetically modified produce plants that don't have replantable seeds i.e. every year you have to buy your seeds from Monsanto. The 3rd world can't afford to use Monsanto's seeds and our subsidies of the corn industry make is hard for 3rd world farmers to make a living.

[pm]

I read this years ago, but Monsanto's genetically modified corn seeds had something they referred to as a "terminator" gene, which is what made the genetically modified plants single generation. However, when natural plants were pollinated with pollen from genetically modified plants (my biology is probably wrong here), seeds the natural plants produced retained the terminator gene.

Extrapolate this out to the worst-case scenario and you've got the entire world buying corn seed from Monsanto because natural corn is extinct, through decades of unintentional pollination.

[0x12]

Posilac.

Schmeiser.

Basmati.

And lots and lots of others.

Really, Monsanto is evil, it has been proven way beyond any doubt. In cloudants position I'm not sure I would have taken the money but I would have never ever sent out this press release.