Re:Food. What you are used to eating
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Kimchi in Space
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· Score: 1
In my own experience, if you live in a place long enough you adapt to the food such that you feel just as weird going "back in the other direction"
Eh, only if you dive in head first. But a lot of people like to still eat their home country's food, or mix elements from their original culture in with the culture of their new home. Otherwise there wouldn't be the Asian supermarket, the Indian supermarket, and so on. Those places aren't filled with white folk looking to try a new fried rice or curry recipe.
All the more reason. If a vendor were to give them an inexpensive solution, and then leave, the manager would have what he paid for, and nothing more.
From my understanding, the vendor already has a working system now. So why add something new? What are the benefits?
BUt by locking in the relationship, the vendor can offer a still inexpensive solution, but with foreseeable growth. And because the relationship is locked, the vendor can feel comfortable in adding extra features early on in order to help the client's business to grow into needing a larger solution -- which then gets to be built upon the original solution, without having to start from scratch.
I think you're forgetting that the "vendor" is an employee. What happens when he decides to get a "real" job?
From my vantage point, the store owner has the following decision to make: "Do I accept the current system, which works, but may not have all of the bells and whistles I want, or do I try to replace it with a fancier system designed by an employee who may or may not do a decent job and who may or may not be here six months from now?" Given my experience as a software consultant, and knowing what I know about code quality from "professionals," I'm going to wager that a hobbyist is going to build a system that may work, but will likely be fragile and difficult to change. Knowing what I know, and given the assumption that the owner has a rather limited budget, I would opt for the status quo. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
While your comments have merit, I think you are forgetting that we are dealing with (presumably) a single comic book shop. My assumption, perhaps incorrect, is that this is a small, single store with two or three minimum wage employees working as cashiers alongside the manager/owner. I've worked with many small businesses that fit this mold, and almost all are very, very cost-conscious. If it works well enough, that's fine by them. They'd rather have something that works now and is cheap, than something very expensive that offers far more functionality than they need now, even if they may need it 5 or 10 years from now if they start opening new stores.
Not only that, but if any programming is involved, now the manager is doubly-screwed when this employee finally moves out of his parent's house and quits his comic book shop job. If there's a problem with the system, or some added functionality needed, now he's got to find someone who's both a programmer and willing to work for minimum wage.
In a perfect world, our government would cut the spending on armament and give the decrease to the CAI to build schools.
Unfortunately, if the US did that, the fundamentalists would use that as an excuse to attack the schools for being in collaboration with the Great Satan.
FYI, the CAI - which has built over 50 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan - was founded, and is primarily funded by - Americans. Granted, it's not funds from the US gov't, and I agree that there might be some distrust in such a case. But it's important to understand that many of these people don't fear or hate American citizens, but the American military machine.
That's the best long-term strategy to solving fundamentalism, IMO.
Ultimately, the only solution to fundamentalism is that the surrounding society deems it not acceptable. Education is essential in achieving this; however, it is by no means sufficient. It is perfectly possible to be well-educated and an evil fanatic.
Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that education was sufficient, but it's a hell of a lot more effective than our current strategy. For example, many Pakistani and Afghanis despised the Taliban. The US government had a helluva an opportunity to clean up the Taliban and really change the perception of America in Central Asia. But we screwed the pooch, IMO, with our "shock and awe" in Afghanistan, our single-minded focus on hunting Bin Laden (to the detriment of helping rebuild and modernize Afghanistan), and then our premature shift of focus to Iraq.
The best thing that could be done with Pakistan is to raise the number of books people read.
First things first: let's help raise the literacy rate. You've really got to respect the work being done by the Central Asia Institute, as they are building non-fundamentalist schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, with schools especially targeted to girls. In a perfect world, our government would cut the spending on armament and give the decrease to the CAI to build schools. That's the best long-term strategy to solving fundamentalism, IMO.
Study after study has found no significant health benefits sufficient enough to warrant circumcision. The American Medical Association no longer recommends the procedure and Ontario Public Health Care no longer pays for it.
I've heard that HPV rates are lower in circumcised men.
Women whose sexual partners are circumcised are less likely to develop cervical cancer than the partners of uncircumcised men, concludes a report out today.
The difference was statistically significant only in the partners of men considered to be at high risk for infection with human papillomavirus, or HPV, according to the study in The New England Journal of Medicine. HPV causes genital warts in men and women, and certain strains cause virtually all cervical cancers. HPV also has been linked to cancers of the vagina, anus and penis.
Having a political party come into office that is dedicated to taking an engineer's eye to fixing the legal code of the entire state. The last figure I saw for the cost to businesses to comply with federal income tax requirements was $289B. Just going to a flat tax would be an automatic release of $289B worth of labor!
Although it's not like $289B would materialize out of nowhere. It would be $289B less for the accountants of the world.
Granted, it would improve efficiency and productivity for the economy as a whole. But you could see how certain people would be against it. It would be akin to the government allowing an unlimited number of visas for overseas developers. A net positive for our economy (and the world), but your average developer who now has more competition is likely going to frown on such legislature.
The challenge is not to create jobs, but to create wealth. If the govt.just wants to create jobs, they can hire a million goons to destroy stuff and hire another million people to rebuild stuff - boom, 2 million jobs created.
What do you think war is for?
I have pretty libertarian views and prefer smaller government, but I can see the allure and benefits to projects like this and increased spending on infrastructure (roads, rail, etc.). I wish we'd get the hell out of the Middle East and use the trillion or so we'd save (and countless lives) and do two things with that savings: reduce taxes and increase physical and technological infrastructure.
I agree wholeheartedly. I didn't mean to imply that every company in the real world uses Microsoft products, but the original poster was claiming that Microsoft was doing down because they were not reaching university students. I argue that there is very little correlation between the tools one uses in college and the tools companies in the real world use.
Nor was I proposing that universities should teach Microsoft technologies. The tools used should depend on what the education is intended for. There is a big difference between computer science and software development, yet most universities have just one curriculum for both tracks. Excluding Microsoft products seems a bit silly if you are wanting to become a professional software developer.
Help me out here, I have a Pentium III 877Mhz processor machine with about a half gig of DDR ram that I purchased in 2000. It still runs fine. For some reason when I install Visual Studio on the Win XP partition, it does not work so well....
So tell me, what am I doing wrong? Several people have instructed me to buy a new computer but for some reason I do not think that I should have to buy a new computer every time a new version of Visual Studio comes out.
Buy a new computer.
If you are just wanting to tinker with VS for fun, as a hobby, I can see your frustration. I guess some hobbies require an upfront expenditure that may or may not be worth it, depending on how interested you are in practicing your hobby. But if you are programming for a living, then why don't you have better hardware? Seriously? I don't care what tools you are using, but with a faster machine, bigger hard drive, more monitors, and so on, you create a more conducive work environment, meaning you are more effective and efficient.
Would you go to a doctor that uses outdated technology because he doesn't want to drop a nickel to buy the new stuff? Or a civil engineer that still insists on using slide rules? Of course not. Nor should a professional developer be using antiquated tools.
If you want to understand upcoming trends in the IT world, you should look at what is being studied at Universities. That's all I'm saying. Students simply aren't using MS tools during their university coursework and more often than not, it is because they don't want to. Most schools already are members of the MS Academic Alliance and give VS away (at least for CS students and maybe a few other departments). Even though they give these tools away, students still prefer mostly FOSS tools.
If there is a direct correlation between software use in college and software used in businesses, then given Microsoft's dominance in developer tools today (and the past couple of decades) then it would be safe to assume that many colleges were Microsoft shops in the 1980s and 1990s, right? I started my undergraduate work in 1996, and there was no breath of Microsoft tools then. And, talking to older students and professors, there never had been use of Microsoft. Heck, my school didn't start teaching Java until 1998 or 1999. It was Pascal and C and C++ for decades previous.
I remember when I was in college I assumed (naively) that everyone in the real world was using what I was using: vim, g++, bash, etc. It wasn't until I got my first coop job that I realized that 90% of my coworkers had no idea what vi was. Point being, the tools used in university do not necessarily transfer to the real world for a plethora of reasons.
Thus, the logical conclusion to reaching libertarian goals is to become a politician. It's not so much a question of whether the lifestyle of a politician is appealing to a libertarian, as it is a question of how strongly does one libertarian feel about their ideals.
But we live in reality, where different people have different views, and the only way to reach a consensus is to compromise. And libertarians (myself included) are pretty binary about things. We tend to see things in black and white.
The idea and concepts of libertarianism are great, but I honestly don't think that a "pure" libertarian society could function. Just like how communism sounds great in theory, but cannot work in practice. A relative and fellow libertarian once put it this way - the logical extension of libertarians who want small government and local control (i.e., not having some Federal government mandating codes and rules, but have those decisions left to the individual or in cases of public areas, to communities) is to have the country governed by HOAs. I don't know if you've ever participated on the board for an HOA, but I have, and if that is what the practical extension of libertarianism would be (in practice), God help us all.
I am familiar with libertarianism and how it differs from anarchism. My point wasn't that libertarians were anti-government, just that IMO a true blooded libertarian wouldn't want to be a politician. Moreover, a true blooded libertarian wouldn't want to elect a person who desires to be a career politician.
Now how can you run an effective party if my thoughts are true? How can you compete against established parties full of career politicians who don't mind back scratching, cronyism, and nepotism?
What I find interesting is that, to me, a true libertarian would not want to be a politician. A true libertarian wants to "walk to the beat of her own drummer," and therefore doesn't aspire to work in a position where she would be in charge of making codes or rules or directives that instruct others how to live their lives. Sure, a libertarian might want to "do their civic duty" and serve for a term, but I'd be leery of any Libertarian candidate that appeared to be a "professional politician."
Long story short: I think the libertarian ideals themselves make it impossible for there to be a viable Libertarian party.
I grew up in the Midwest, including suburbs and very rural small towns, so I am familiar with the vastness and open spaces there. What would be interesting is whether a city or county that wants the tracks to come through their town could force a private individual to sell their land to another private individual (i.e., the company building the tracks). I believe the Supreme Court gave the thumbs up for this a few years back (it happened in San Diego back in 2002 or 2003 when the city claimed land under eminent domain to build a new stadium downtown for the Padres), but it is becoming an increasingly unpopular move.
A private company lacks the clout that the state of Federal government has. So what's to stop all these small towns from getting all high and mighty? Letting them build through their town, then decide to impose a train tax on every train that passes through, once the track is laid? Or what if you get support from a town, but the citizenry opposes it, so six months later they elect someone else who vows to kick you out? Granted, the majority of towns, cities, counties, and states will likely behave, but do you really want to have to respond to every mayor of a town with 500 people who decides to do something annoying that hampers the progress of construction? And you say towns will like the tracks b/c of jobs. What happens if they hire some townspeople, but they can't cut it, so they fire them, and the town raises a stink?
Another challenge, as you noted, is getting the destinations in the city. I assume the cities own their major transportation hubs (i.e., Union Station). Would they let a private company build tracks in there, or would they balk at the idea, worrying that it would detract from their own business?
I dunno, just thinking aloud here, but it seems like the challenges are too vast for a private individual or company to surmount.
Actually, the maglev could run along either abandoned railroad tracks or even along the highways. But if I were them, I would insist on owning the land. In particular, they will want to install pipelines, waterlines, communications, power, etc.
But they'd have to buy the land from the railroad companies, or lease it, no? And what about the counties or towns that don't want the maglev running through their land because of noise concerns?
I just think it would be very, very hard, if not impossible, for a non-government agency to procure the continuous stretches of land needed to get this thing built. It's hard enough for a city to build or expand an airport, for example. The city I live in has (San Diego, CA) has been talking about expanding the airport for years, and it keeps coming up every election cycle, but nothing's been done since these discussions started 10+ years ago.
Sure, BillG and Warren have this kind of money, but how are they going to procure the land to build this train track? The government can come in and take land via eminent domain, but BillG and Warren Buffet cannot. So if I am the property owner of a parcel of land and I know that they need to buy my plot to complete the track, and without my land it will cost $200 million to work around it, then I'm going to make them pay me $199 million for a piece of ground that might otherwise be worth only several thousand dollars per acre.
Now, a maglev train that stretches across the West might be more feasible b/c there are large stretches of land that are still gov't owned that the gov't might sell or lease to such an enterprise.
I, for one, hope that the sale doesn't succeed. Yahoo's importance in the online world has steadily been decreasing since the start of this century. I think the best Microsoft/Yahoo merger comparison is the AOL/Time Warner merger, which was a colossal failure. I see the same thing here for MSFT. If they buy Yahoo, I don't expect Yahoo's gradual slide into obscurity to abate or reverse. I'm guessing that five to ten years from now Yahoo will have about as much marketshare and brand recognition in adolescents as Altavista and Ask.com.
I am not a Church goer, let alone a Christian, so I don't know why you felt the need to use the word "your" in your final sentence. Moreover, I never claimed that the Bible should be interpreted literally. Nor do I believe that the Bible is the word of God. Any document written my man (especially one written by many different men over many centuries) is sure to have errors and inaccuracies and contradictions and express viewpoints of the time it was written, which might be less enlightened than our views today. (Case in point: the US Constitution, which many libertarians view as a near-holy text, was initially penned to count black people as 3/5th of a human being. Not a very moral view by today's standards.)
However, I do think that the Bible has served a great purpose over the eons as a rudimentary rule of law and guideline for societal harmony. Yes, there are conflicting passages. Yes, there are laws and rules laid out that run contradictory to today's social mores. Following the Bible literally and taking it's teachings literally and trying to live by them today is folly, but that does not discount a number of things, which you seem loathe to accept:
The Bible does offer a decent groundwork of morality. Yes, there are rather brutish laws in Leviticus regarding homosexuals and lepers and witches and idol worshipers, but those had a time and a place. The Ten Commandments, for example, stands the test of time (negating the specific God-related commandments).
Jesus had a powerful, rebellious, and revolutionary message. If you read the Gospels for what Jesus says and does, and ignore the hocus pocus stuff like the miracles and resurrection, and just read about what he said and what he did in that environment... that was pretty amazing. And the overarching message - love your enemy; non-violence; shame a wrongdoer with his own wrong doings - are profound and should still be emulated today, IMO.
Everyone should read the Bible and appreciate it for what it was and still means today.
Would they prosecute, though? What are their damages? Would it be worth the negative PR?
Is it worth the fight? You'd probably win.. but what? The right to have big televisions at superbowl gatherings? Not exactly the kind of thing most churches really care about.
That's my whole point. That it isn't worth fighting, so the NFL would never sue the Church. Sure, it's cheap and easy to send a letter saying, "Don't do this," but it is worth the attorney's fees and negative PR for the NFL to actually sue a Church?
I sincerely doubt it. So the Church has nothing to lose by going ahead with their plans. If they NFL doesn't take legal action - which they most likely won't - then no harm to either side. If the NFL sues, then the Church will engender a lot of sympathy and support, while the NFL will be viewed as bullying Plutocrats.
This Church should grow a pair. That was my earlier sentiment: Jesus Fucking Christ had the balls to stand up to the Romans and Pharisees. Yes, it cost him His life, but His testicular fortitude solidified his place in history.
Please. You are quoting Paul, not Jesus. Jesus was a hippie rebel. He had some very revolutionary ideas. If a man wrongs you, shame him for his transgressions. Give your money to the poor. Live a righteous life and don't be a prick. Don't be greedy. And for God's sake, let my followers watch the f'ing Superbowl in fellowship, biatches.
If you can prove an idea in a startup and get enough word of mouth to get noticed, it's a much, much quicker paycheck to let Microsoft buy you. No slow building of your customer base, no bugfixes, no updates to support new APIs in Windows. Just a quick windfall payment, and then all those pesky details become Someone Else's Problem.
Moreover, selling to MSFT or GOOG ensures (or whatever the dominant company is in your field) ensures that said dominant company won't make a competitive product line and squash your's.
I'd call the NFL's bluff. Jesus was a pretty rebellious and rock the boat sort of guy. He didn't back down from the Roman's or Pharisees, he told people how it was, associated with unwed women and whores, and scared those in power.
And got crucified for it.
I have a feeling Roger Goodell is no Pontius Pilot.
Would they prosecute, though? What are their damages? Would it be worth the negative PR?
It's easy for me to say this, but if I were one of the elders of that Church I would encourage the congregation to watch together anyway. I'd call the NFL's bluff. Jesus was a pretty rebellious and rock the boat sort of guy. He didn't back down from the Roman's or Pharisees, he told people how it was, associated with unwed women and whores, and scared those in power. It's hard to imagine that a guy who was so brazen to cost him his life would balk at the threat of a lawsuit. He'd watch the game with his brethren, dammit!
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Eh, only if you dive in head first. But a lot of people like to still eat their home country's food, or mix elements from their original culture in with the culture of their new home. Otherwise there wouldn't be the Asian supermarket, the Indian supermarket, and so on. Those places aren't filled with white folk looking to try a new fried rice or curry recipe.
From my understanding, the vendor already has a working system now. So why add something new? What are the benefits?
BUt by locking in the relationship, the vendor can offer a still inexpensive solution, but with foreseeable growth. And because the relationship is locked, the vendor can feel comfortable in adding extra features early on in order to help the client's business to grow into needing a larger solution -- which then gets to be built upon the original solution, without having to start from scratch.I think you're forgetting that the "vendor" is an employee. What happens when he decides to get a "real" job?
From my vantage point, the store owner has the following decision to make: "Do I accept the current system, which works, but may not have all of the bells and whistles I want, or do I try to replace it with a fancier system designed by an employee who may or may not do a decent job and who may or may not be here six months from now?" Given my experience as a software consultant, and knowing what I know about code quality from "professionals," I'm going to wager that a hobbyist is going to build a system that may work, but will likely be fragile and difficult to change. Knowing what I know, and given the assumption that the owner has a rather limited budget, I would opt for the status quo. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
While your comments have merit, I think you are forgetting that we are dealing with (presumably) a single comic book shop. My assumption, perhaps incorrect, is that this is a small, single store with two or three minimum wage employees working as cashiers alongside the manager/owner. I've worked with many small businesses that fit this mold, and almost all are very, very cost-conscious. If it works well enough, that's fine by them. They'd rather have something that works now and is cheap, than something very expensive that offers far more functionality than they need now, even if they may need it 5 or 10 years from now if they start opening new stores.
Not only that, but if any programming is involved, now the manager is doubly-screwed when this employee finally moves out of his parent's house and quits his comic book shop job. If there's a problem with the system, or some added functionality needed, now he's got to find someone who's both a programmer and willing to work for minimum wage.
Unfortunately, if the US did that, the fundamentalists would use that as an excuse to attack the schools for being in collaboration with the Great Satan.
FYI, the CAI - which has built over 50 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan - was founded, and is primarily funded by - Americans. Granted, it's not funds from the US gov't, and I agree that there might be some distrust in such a case. But it's important to understand that many of these people don't fear or hate American citizens, but the American military machine.
Ultimately, the only solution to fundamentalism is that the surrounding society deems it not acceptable. Education is essential in achieving this; however, it is by no means sufficient. It is perfectly possible to be well-educated and an evil fanatic.
Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that education was sufficient, but it's a hell of a lot more effective than our current strategy. For example, many Pakistani and Afghanis despised the Taliban. The US government had a helluva an opportunity to clean up the Taliban and really change the perception of America in Central Asia. But we screwed the pooch, IMO, with our "shock and awe" in Afghanistan, our single-minded focus on hunting Bin Laden (to the detriment of helping rebuild and modernize Afghanistan), and then our premature shift of focus to Iraq.
First things first: let's help raise the literacy rate. You've really got to respect the work being done by the Central Asia Institute, as they are building non-fundamentalist schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, with schools especially targeted to girls. In a perfect world, our government would cut the spending on armament and give the decrease to the CAI to build schools. That's the best long-term strategy to solving fundamentalism, IMO.
I've heard that HPV rates are lower in circumcised men.
A bit of Googling... Circumcision lowers risk of cervical cancer:
Although it's not like $289B would materialize out of nowhere. It would be $289B less for the accountants of the world.
Granted, it would improve efficiency and productivity for the economy as a whole. But you could see how certain people would be against it. It would be akin to the government allowing an unlimited number of visas for overseas developers. A net positive for our economy (and the world), but your average developer who now has more competition is likely going to frown on such legislature.
What do you think war is for?
I have pretty libertarian views and prefer smaller government, but I can see the allure and benefits to projects like this and increased spending on infrastructure (roads, rail, etc.). I wish we'd get the hell out of the Middle East and use the trillion or so we'd save (and countless lives) and do two things with that savings: reduce taxes and increase physical and technological infrastructure.
I agree wholeheartedly. I didn't mean to imply that every company in the real world uses Microsoft products, but the original poster was claiming that Microsoft was doing down because they were not reaching university students. I argue that there is very little correlation between the tools one uses in college and the tools companies in the real world use.
Nor was I proposing that universities should teach Microsoft technologies. The tools used should depend on what the education is intended for. There is a big difference between computer science and software development, yet most universities have just one curriculum for both tracks. Excluding Microsoft products seems a bit silly if you are wanting to become a professional software developer.
Buy a new computer.
If you are just wanting to tinker with VS for fun, as a hobby, I can see your frustration. I guess some hobbies require an upfront expenditure that may or may not be worth it, depending on how interested you are in practicing your hobby. But if you are programming for a living, then why don't you have better hardware? Seriously? I don't care what tools you are using, but with a faster machine, bigger hard drive, more monitors, and so on, you create a more conducive work environment, meaning you are more effective and efficient.
Would you go to a doctor that uses outdated technology because he doesn't want to drop a nickel to buy the new stuff? Or a civil engineer that still insists on using slide rules? Of course not. Nor should a professional developer be using antiquated tools.
If there is a direct correlation between software use in college and software used in businesses, then given Microsoft's dominance in developer tools today (and the past couple of decades) then it would be safe to assume that many colleges were Microsoft shops in the 1980s and 1990s, right? I started my undergraduate work in 1996, and there was no breath of Microsoft tools then. And, talking to older students and professors, there never had been use of Microsoft. Heck, my school didn't start teaching Java until 1998 or 1999. It was Pascal and C and C++ for decades previous.
I remember when I was in college I assumed (naively) that everyone in the real world was using what I was using: vim, g++, bash, etc. It wasn't until I got my first coop job that I realized that 90% of my coworkers had no idea what vi was. Point being, the tools used in university do not necessarily transfer to the real world for a plethora of reasons.
But we live in reality, where different people have different views, and the only way to reach a consensus is to compromise. And libertarians (myself included) are pretty binary about things. We tend to see things in black and white.
The idea and concepts of libertarianism are great, but I honestly don't think that a "pure" libertarian society could function. Just like how communism sounds great in theory, but cannot work in practice. A relative and fellow libertarian once put it this way - the logical extension of libertarians who want small government and local control (i.e., not having some Federal government mandating codes and rules, but have those decisions left to the individual or in cases of public areas, to communities) is to have the country governed by HOAs. I don't know if you've ever participated on the board for an HOA, but I have, and if that is what the practical extension of libertarianism would be (in practice), God help us all.
I am familiar with libertarianism and how it differs from anarchism. My point wasn't that libertarians were anti-government, just that IMO a true blooded libertarian wouldn't want to be a politician. Moreover, a true blooded libertarian wouldn't want to elect a person who desires to be a career politician.
Now how can you run an effective party if my thoughts are true? How can you compete against established parties full of career politicians who don't mind back scratching, cronyism, and nepotism?
You have a great point.
What I find interesting is that, to me, a true libertarian would not want to be a politician. A true libertarian wants to "walk to the beat of her own drummer," and therefore doesn't aspire to work in a position where she would be in charge of making codes or rules or directives that instruct others how to live their lives. Sure, a libertarian might want to "do their civic duty" and serve for a term, but I'd be leery of any Libertarian candidate that appeared to be a "professional politician."
Long story short: I think the libertarian ideals themselves make it impossible for there to be a viable Libertarian party.
I grew up in the Midwest, including suburbs and very rural small towns, so I am familiar with the vastness and open spaces there. What would be interesting is whether a city or county that wants the tracks to come through their town could force a private individual to sell their land to another private individual (i.e., the company building the tracks). I believe the Supreme Court gave the thumbs up for this a few years back (it happened in San Diego back in 2002 or 2003 when the city claimed land under eminent domain to build a new stadium downtown for the Padres), but it is becoming an increasingly unpopular move.
A private company lacks the clout that the state of Federal government has. So what's to stop all these small towns from getting all high and mighty? Letting them build through their town, then decide to impose a train tax on every train that passes through, once the track is laid? Or what if you get support from a town, but the citizenry opposes it, so six months later they elect someone else who vows to kick you out? Granted, the majority of towns, cities, counties, and states will likely behave, but do you really want to have to respond to every mayor of a town with 500 people who decides to do something annoying that hampers the progress of construction? And you say towns will like the tracks b/c of jobs. What happens if they hire some townspeople, but they can't cut it, so they fire them, and the town raises a stink?
Another challenge, as you noted, is getting the destinations in the city. I assume the cities own their major transportation hubs (i.e., Union Station). Would they let a private company build tracks in there, or would they balk at the idea, worrying that it would detract from their own business?
I dunno, just thinking aloud here, but it seems like the challenges are too vast for a private individual or company to surmount.
But they'd have to buy the land from the railroad companies, or lease it, no? And what about the counties or towns that don't want the maglev running through their land because of noise concerns?
I just think it would be very, very hard, if not impossible, for a non-government agency to procure the continuous stretches of land needed to get this thing built. It's hard enough for a city to build or expand an airport, for example. The city I live in has (San Diego, CA) has been talking about expanding the airport for years, and it keeps coming up every election cycle, but nothing's been done since these discussions started 10+ years ago.
Sure, BillG and Warren have this kind of money, but how are they going to procure the land to build this train track? The government can come in and take land via eminent domain, but BillG and Warren Buffet cannot. So if I am the property owner of a parcel of land and I know that they need to buy my plot to complete the track, and without my land it will cost $200 million to work around it, then I'm going to make them pay me $199 million for a piece of ground that might otherwise be worth only several thousand dollars per acre.
Now, a maglev train that stretches across the West might be more feasible b/c there are large stretches of land that are still gov't owned that the gov't might sell or lease to such an enterprise.
I, for one, hope that the sale doesn't succeed. Yahoo's importance in the online world has steadily been decreasing since the start of this century. I think the best Microsoft/Yahoo merger comparison is the AOL/Time Warner merger, which was a colossal failure. I see the same thing here for MSFT. If they buy Yahoo, I don't expect Yahoo's gradual slide into obscurity to abate or reverse. I'm guessing that five to ten years from now Yahoo will have about as much marketshare and brand recognition in adolescents as Altavista and Ask.com.
I am not a Church goer, let alone a Christian, so I don't know why you felt the need to use the word "your" in your final sentence. Moreover, I never claimed that the Bible should be interpreted literally. Nor do I believe that the Bible is the word of God. Any document written my man (especially one written by many different men over many centuries) is sure to have errors and inaccuracies and contradictions and express viewpoints of the time it was written, which might be less enlightened than our views today. (Case in point: the US Constitution, which many libertarians view as a near-holy text, was initially penned to count black people as 3/5th of a human being. Not a very moral view by today's standards.)
However, I do think that the Bible has served a great purpose over the eons as a rudimentary rule of law and guideline for societal harmony. Yes, there are conflicting passages. Yes, there are laws and rules laid out that run contradictory to today's social mores. Following the Bible literally and taking it's teachings literally and trying to live by them today is folly, but that does not discount a number of things, which you seem loathe to accept:
Everyone should read the Bible and appreciate it for what it was and still means today.
Would they prosecute, though? What are their damages? Would it be worth the negative PR?
Is it worth the fight? You'd probably win.. but what? The right to have big televisions at superbowl gatherings? Not exactly the kind of thing most churches really care about.
That's my whole point. That it isn't worth fighting, so the NFL would never sue the Church. Sure, it's cheap and easy to send a letter saying, "Don't do this," but it is worth the attorney's fees and negative PR for the NFL to actually sue a Church?
I sincerely doubt it. So the Church has nothing to lose by going ahead with their plans. If they NFL doesn't take legal action - which they most likely won't - then no harm to either side. If the NFL sues, then the Church will engender a lot of sympathy and support, while the NFL will be viewed as bullying Plutocrats.
This Church should grow a pair. That was my earlier sentiment: Jesus Fucking Christ had the balls to stand up to the Romans and Pharisees. Yes, it cost him His life, but His testicular fortitude solidified his place in history.
Please. You are quoting Paul, not Jesus. Jesus was a hippie rebel. He had some very revolutionary ideas. If a man wrongs you, shame him for his transgressions. Give your money to the poor. Live a righteous life and don't be a prick. Don't be greedy. And for God's sake, let my followers watch the f'ing Superbowl in fellowship, biatches.
Moreover, selling to MSFT or GOOG ensures (or whatever the dominant company is in your field) ensures that said dominant company won't make a competitive product line and squash your's.
And got crucified for it.
I have a feeling Roger Goodell is no Pontius Pilot.
Would they prosecute, though? What are their damages? Would it be worth the negative PR?
It's easy for me to say this, but if I were one of the elders of that Church I would encourage the congregation to watch together anyway. I'd call the NFL's bluff. Jesus was a pretty rebellious and rock the boat sort of guy. He didn't back down from the Roman's or Pharisees, he told people how it was, associated with unwed women and whores, and scared those in power. It's hard to imagine that a guy who was so brazen to cost him his life would balk at the threat of a lawsuit. He'd watch the game with his brethren, dammit!