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Comment by camillomiller | Hacker News Reader

The disposable nature of factory farmed cattles is so common and accepted knowledge, that it's ok to make crappy analogies out of it. That's particularly sad because it's the idea of an extremely smart mind.

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Well, given 20,0000[1] head of cattle died[2] in a early blizzard (October 4, 2013) in South Dakota and it wasn't the number one story on any national news site pretty much tells you where cattle rate.

1) estimates go from 10,000 to 100,000 depending on source - it seems like 20,000 was the conservative estimate by veterinarians

2) cattle hadn't grown winter coats, rain, 70mph wind, snow = frozen cattle http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131022-cattl...

[edit: these were in the summer pastures still and I doubt they'd be defined as factory farmed cattle]

It's mostly the rain that got to them. Cattle have been genetically engineered, I mean bred, for cold tolerance. They can't handle moisture combined with the cold.

They didn't have their winter coats and it was early enough that they were still in the summer pastures, so later in the year, even with the rain, they would have been fine.

It's not just on "factory farms" where animals raised for meat are considered temporary. If you are going to slaughter a pig in 18 months, you probably are going to be disinclined to form emotional bonds to it.

I named my farm pigs, and still knew that they were food.

Now later in life I have more qualms about eating pork. Pigs are smarter than dogs, and every bit as affectionate. Cows are pretty stupid. These days I feel like killing an animal over a certain intelligence is bad.

Computers... I have a computer that is my Home Theater PC that has only ever been upgraded. I don't think there is a part from the original AMD K5 90 in 1997 that I ran, but probably a few screws. I would upgrade a mother board and keep the vid card and hard disks. Or swap a Network card. Keep the hard drives, or a Raid controller. It would have likely been cheaper to start over a few of the time, but there is a sentimental attachment to the machine you took in to battle in Quake, raced in NFS, quested through WoW with, and had "Hot Coffee" with in GTA. That stayed up with you when you were building software, or helped with your taxes.

>Cows are pretty stupid

True, but they do make other cow friends and have social lives [1]. Now sheep.. they are stupid. And chickens, don't get me started.

[1] http://threegablesfarm.com/2013/02/natural-cattle-behaviour/

I've been vegetarian for over 20 years because of industrialization, but I have absolutely zero issues with small farm killing or hunting.

Waiting patiently for the person who loved his chickens to come in and mention how they each have a different personality.

Meanwhile, I'd wager that at least one person reading this thread has casually eaten a dog.

I lost so many "good computers" that all I have now are pet hard drivers. Yet, I pet those.

What's the name of a server that you are completely prepared to replace in 30 minutes notice (they are for personal use, some downtime is acceptable), but pet anyway?

Your computer reminds me of George Washington's Axe.

I'm not sure how the analogy relies on awareness of factory farming, it seems to mostly rely on awareness of cattle. It would work just as well in the context of some idealized rancher raising cattle hundreds of years ago.

I agree that industrialised farming is very upsetting. (I am a life-long vegetarian, by the way!) Have you watched the film Samsara? To quote Jason Kottke, some of the scenes give a "full visual meaning to the mass production of food."

But the analogy holds. On any sort of farm (even a vegetable farm) units of production are fungible commodities. And it turns out that this notion of fungibility is very important in post-virtualisation architectures.

Indeed. Although, I really expect such a high mind to come out with a much better metaphor of fungibilty (which shouldn't be so hard a concept for sys admins and the like). Other examples: paper napkins vs silk napkins; Stylographic pen vs bic pens. And so on.

I haven't seen Samsara, but I've taken a note. Vegetarian here, too. I just read "Eating animals" (by JS Foer). That's a very good read, but as an European I must say it feels like it's written from a pretty U.S.-centric standpoint.

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