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Comments: 78 +- Technology: Nicaragua Creates Innovative Agricultural Information System With Open Source on Friday November 13, @05:29PM
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ScuttleMonkey
on Friday November 13, @05:29PM
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from the you-couldn't-pick-a-better-color-scheme? dept.
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johanneswilm writes "Nicaragua is the second-poorest country of the Americas. It is now also the Latin American country with the most capable web-based information system for agriculture, thanks to open source software. ALBAstryde itself is open source, and it is based on Django and jQuery. It allows the user to play with the data, and its reach is further extended by a net of radio stations which are broadcasting the numbers to remote peasants, who thereby, for the first time ever, get up to date data on prices and general production levels in the country. The implementation for the ministry of agriculture of Nicaragua already contains live data."
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hmmm. (Score:3, Funny)
$('plant .coca').harvest('fast');
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Re:hmmm. (Score:4, Informative)
Nicaragua's climate is not best suited for coca... Pot would probably be best
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Parent
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I don't know much about drugs or agriculture, but I always laugh when posts like this are given serious positive mods.
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North America Ag systems (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be an interesting exercise to check out the U.S. systems and review how they could be improved. Especially the market systems. The USDA does a lot of monitoring of various local markets for everything from cattle to hay to everything in between. Conditions at all these markets contribute to the commodities price at the main trading markets in Chicago. If you look at the USDA data though, it's all still old mainframe stuff with tab delimited all caps formatting. The data is all fairly disjointed and it's not possible right now to mine the data unless you want to collect and translate it all into your own data warehouse. These market reports often contain interesting information about why the price is being affected, such as weather conditions, etc. I think the government should do a better job of making this data available to the public. You know the big trading houses have negotiated direct feeds to this data, and I think that gives them unfair advantage in determining market pricing.
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...of various local markets for everything from cattle to hay to everything in between....
I didn't realize there was a market for bovine stomachs and intestines....then again I don't really eat at McDonald's....
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I think that's why in my country they often have to import stuff to make sausages, nuggets or patties. The fresh "misc" meat has enough value and actually gets sold in significant quantities.
Whereas in more "squeamish" countries, they have to disguise the stuff, or convert them to pet food.
If you eat more of an animal without having to disguise it, it means less wastage and better efficiency
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Yumm, Haggis [wikipedia.org], you haven't lived until you've eaten haggis!
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You can fry previously boiled bovine or sheep intestines and eat them in tacos... pretty tasty but fattening
Re:North America Ag systems (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone determines their own market price, and either you buy or you don't. You are right, big houses do make the largest contribution to the actual pricing, but everyone makes that decision on their own. The small players (consumers), although individually insignificant, together make a huge contribution to the market price. But that usually isn't based on information about the futures market but rather their current economic state. Apples have a price at the grocery store, and what they now cost is what they cost. You have to make the decision at the time you're in the store whether to buy or not. But (and especially for food) this is not a good free market. Consumers should be able to plan when they buy the apples so they will . If you have access to the market information for the next month's apples, and you see that you can get them for half what you could get them for now, you could defer your purchase (if you can) and get more for less. A true free market depends on ALL participants having full access to all the information in the market. Instead, it's largely decided by traders, which means we are subjected to these massive bubbles which are all making a few people a lot of money and its us who suffer. Now, there are fringe benefits to this. In general it smooths out pricing, because the public will constantly over pay which enables higher inventories and that acts as an insurance policy when prices rise (more supply is then dumped). That's fine, I don't care about the public, it's the domination of the market information by a few big guys when there are a lot of people who are interested in investing in this market.
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Should be vry interestng to see how this works out (Score:5, Insightful)
If small time farmers can prosper using this system in one of the poorer country in Latin America, this could bode very well for fair-trade types of practices and businesses, as well as micro-lenders, all over the world.
Good luck, amigos!
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Good Job (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good Job (Score:5, Funny)
Geeks are a scary lot when they hate you.
They're even a scarier lot when they LOVE you.
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Parent
So... (Score:5, Funny)
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That's obvious (Score:2)
Vaporware (Score:4, Insightful)
Shut up and report back, when agricultural output in the country increases by, at least, 50%...
For benchmark, this source [nationsencyclopedia.com] reports: During 1990-2000 the agricultural output grew by a yearly average of 5.7%. In 2001, the agricultural trade surplus was $85.2 million. But that was when the Sandinistas were out of power [wikipedia.org]. They are ruling the country again since 2006, when Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency with 37.99% of the vote.
In 2007 they were afraid of a famine [highbeam.com] blaming a hurricane. Unless their policies [wikipedia.org] are drastically different now, they aren't going to achieve much good, even if they use Linux for their command-and-control implementation of economy — for the Greater Good (TM).
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Re:Vaporware (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, those hurricanes never do as much damage as those Third World socialist creeps try to claim (cough) Katrina (cough). If they weren't socialists, there wouldn't be a problem.
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There was no famine in New Orleans. There was a major break down in law and order and other failures of the local government. A Socialist needn't be from "Third World" to be a disaster — the US is hit by hurricanes regularly, but you don't get reports about shots fired at rescue helicopters [bbc.co.uk] from low income housing... You can blame Bush all you want, but I think, the mismanagement o
Re:Vaporware (Score:5, Informative)
To sum up the data: Per Capita Income in "Blue" states is 20% higher then in Red States and Graduation rates are 5.4% higher. Violent and Property crime are 11.1% and 10.1% higher respectively in states controlled by Republican Legislatures. In terms of taxation, "Blue" States overwhelmingly pay far more in taxes then they receive in federal outlays, with the money going to "Red" states. Interestingly, under pretty much every measure of administrative efficiency, Democratic governments do better then Republican ones, by a sizeable margin.
Brush it off as the price of hedonist sin? 9 out of 10 of the states with the lowest divorce rates are blue states, while all 10 out of 10 of the top 10 states are red states. All of the top 16 states with the highest abortion rates voted for Bush, while 9 out of 10 of the states with the lowest rates voted for Kerry.
Unlike you, I'm not going to be a dick and assume Correlation-->Causation, but for what it's worth, the evidence is on my side, not yours.
Other nitpicks:
1) When my home state, Florida, got hit by Hurricanes in 2004, crop yields fell by 40%. But unlike Nicaragua, we were part of a large country, most of which was not hit by a Hurricane, that was able to carry us through for our eating needs. Nicaragua meanwhile, is roughly the size of Miami-Dade county. When it gets hit by a hurricane, the entire country gets hit. And so without importing food from elsewhere, famine is inevitable. It's a little inexplicable that this didn't occur to you in your analysis.
2) "There was no famine in New Orleans. There was a major break down in law and order and other failures of the local government."
Don't rewrite history. I remember when it took days and days for the government to get *anybody* to the Superdrome as 20,000 people were in dire need of food and water. We spend more on our military then literally every other country combined, but we couldn't air drop food and water onto a large stationary target on our territory? (And don't mention security. Our National Guard manages to run humanitarian efforts in Fallujah under heavy weapon fire). It was a terrible display of incompetence, and voters saw it too, with the disaster triggering a huge structural decrease in Bush's approval ratings.
3) Unless the pre-Katrina government of New Orleans engaged in policies that nationalized the means of production, then calling them "Socialist" makes you look like a dumbass.
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Parent
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Thanks for picking up the ball and running with it, my friend. I was just reading the guy's response, and my mouth was hanging open from the assumptions he was making and the cherry-picked situations he was trying to mis-apply. I could maybe add a couple of other angles (such as US economic and diplomatic measures routinely used to make things harder for South American "socialist" countries), but why guild the lily? Your response was about as comprehensive as it gets.
Cheers!
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Easily attributable to the Democratic politicans being better at siphoning the federal pork.
Per person? Anyway, I'm not going to bother with statistics, which even you admit to be partisan. There are many ways to misrepresent data like that — by, for example, excluding ce
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1) Using http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_pigbook2008porkpercap [cagw.org] as a source, an anti-spending organisation that most would consider right-wing as a source, some quick math (email me and I'd be glad to send you, otherwise, import it into excel...): The average pork per capita is $46.30 in states won by Obama, and $88 in states won by McCain. That's a 90% difference.
2) Of course, pork spending i
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These tables don't specify, what the money was spent on — a union-entrenching public-works project? Public housing? Paying off farmers to grow less food? One could make a case, that the Democrats are charging the pr
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Yes, why not?
I'm not even asking for the improvements to pay off — this is separate from an actual output increase. I just want an appreciable increase — regardless of whether it has (yet) paid for the software — before I get excited.
Project Cybersyn (Score:2, Informative)
About boosting output, have a look at what Chile did with Project Cybersyn [wikipedia.org] during the Allende reign.
Of course, when the CIA-backed coup [wikipedia.org] took place (Project FUBELT/Track II [wikipedia.org], the first thing the USA-installed puppet dictator Pinochet did was to dismantle the project.
The Cybersyn project itself was not a reason for the coup. It was collateral damage. But having a more efficient way of governing and routing around damage such as outside-sponsosred strikes in this little leftist country was obviously anti-busine
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Hopefully it works out (Score:4, Insightful)
and show that giving poor countries technology so that their people can learn, grow and prosper will work out better then just throwing food and money at them just too keep their miserable, go nowhere lives going.
Give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime.
On the other hand it would be in best interest of big corporation that these poor countries don't move up and prosper as this kills cheap labor.
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Re:Hopefully it works out (Score:4, Informative)
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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Parent
Hopefully it Tie-Dyes out (Score:2)
"and show that giving poor countries technology so that their people can learn, grow and prosper will work out better then just throwing food and money at them just too keep their miserable, go nowhere lives going."
Maybe, but before you all decide that technology is the silver bullet to what ails the third world. You might want to view this [hulu.com] Global Voices video over at Hulu.
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Reagan was right! all damned commies! (Score:2)
Ronnie Reagan and Ollie North were right! all the Nicaraguans are damned communists! Open Source?! this would never have happened if the USA had continued to fund the Contras! [wikipedia.org]
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Also obligatory:
"See?! Only dirty commies use Open Source software!"
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I wonder, was Project Cybersyn [wikipedia.org] open source? Seems that if you are the elected leader of a Central or South American country, you'd better not do anything Socialist that, you know, might actually work better than the free market, or we will kill you and install a brutal military dictator who will slaughter your people for generations to come.
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Unless the country is Honduras, in which case, we'll defend you against your own country's Congress and Supreme Court...
Citations needed
Re:Obligatory... (Score:4, Informative)
Citations needed
Here you go:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/867178/posts [freerepublic.com]
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Parent
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That link has information about America's initial support for Saddam Hussein. Although that man, certainly, does qualify as a butcher of generations, the US did not install him — we merely supported him [wikipedia.org] once he gained power on his own...
Your example thus does not qualify... Want to try again? Remember, you have to find an example of America killing a Socialist leader and installing in his place "a brutal military dictator who will sla
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I was referring to the US deposing Allende in Chile. However, there are many, many other cases of extreme US interventionism. Here's a partial list for you to suck on:
http://www2.truman.edu/~marc/resources/interventions.html [truman.edu]
Here's another, because I know how much you love having the facts regarding US interventionism shoved in your face:
http://www.zompist.com/latam.html [zompist.com]
Here's a general list of interventions, not Latin America specific:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html [evergreen.edu]
We are not the
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None of such cases in recent memory have installed a "brutal military dictator," who "slaughtered" his countrymen for generations. None...
Do you have a list of such kills, lies, thefts, and rapes, that the US has perpetrated in Bulgaria, Chechoslovakia, Estonia, Ukraine, Poland, Kazahstan, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cambodia? Because Socialism there
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I don't hate America. I love America. However, our definitions of 'love' may be different. Your version seems to be the love of an abused spouse who will defend their abusive mate whatever the cost. I see love more as an action than a feeling.
Funny, you have not mentioned a country that actually had socialism. The ones you mention had tyrannies. Not socialism, not communism: tyranny.
Read up on what the CIA did to Chile and Allende. How we supported Saddam Hussein. How we supported Suharto. How we stuck our
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Sorry, but I find it unbelievable for a person to love a country, which he characterizes as a nation of brutal, arrogant, power hungry thugs. There are no ifs-and-buts about this... Either you admit to an earlier gross exaggeration, or — after a moment of honest clarity earlier — you are now (again) being insincere about your true convictions to avoid an outright dismissal as a "fringe".
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You believe that it is okay to depose democratically elected leaders in other countries if they happen to be socialist?
That's all I need to know about you. You are downright evil. I've been trying to argue with you, but it is obvious that you are simply beyond reach.
Good day.
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That's a change of subject on your part... All I want to point out is that — despite several requests — no citation of the US installing a dictator, who then slaughtered his subjects for generations was ever put forward.
Oh, right. An ad-hominem... Not surprising at all — all symptoms are in place.
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Let me remind you of what you said: "I may be too young to remember it, but I do applaud those past efforts of America to stop the inevitable tyranny and misery of Socialism in its tracks, wherever it tried to rear its ugly head or raise it bloody flag."
In this statement, you applaud the US intervention in other countries democratically elected representatives, and our support of coups and installation of military strongmen (who do you think replaces the socialists we kill?) We have killed other country's e
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My persona — with its flaws, etc. is a subject distinct from the topic. Let's not get distracted.
No, actually, you haven't. Don't make a big list — name just one "military dictator, who slaughtered his subjects for generations to come."
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Oh, since Pinochet only murdered around 3000 people, that doesn't count as slaughter? And the fact that these murders went on for decades somehow doesn't count as generations?
Your tired of this thread because I've handed you your ass on a platter.
If you ever care to try your hand at debating me again, I have posts I can link back to to show what kind of a person you are. Mi the Murderer, that's what we'll call you.
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A bunch of fascists in the Honduran Congress, Courts and Military do not legitimize the fact that they staged a coup against the democratically elected president.
EVERYBODY in the international community, has recognized this coup for what it is, and has condemned it in the most serious way (except the US).
Citations needed
There are many examples, this is only one of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_FUBELT [wikipedia.org]
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You're claiming that the Honduran Congress, and the Honduran Courts, AND the Honduran Military are all wrong?
Assuming that they have 4 branches of Government, that's 3 out of 4.
Even if the old President managed to stay in power, what could he possibly do when the rest of the government is arrayed against him?
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Yeah, call them names... The actual fact is, they followed their country's Constitution to the letter [house.gov]. Except for the bit, where they threw the offender out of the country, instead of locking him up and putting him on trial. (I can't remember a "fascist" showing a weakness like that, BTW...)