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Comment Re:No end-user would do this fiscally (Score 1) 226

To drive those 8000 miles the apportioned cost would be $4,000. You can get 10 round-trip tickets London-NY off-season and 5 on-season for that.

If you want to see London, then buy a plane ticket. If you want to see Canada, Alaska, Russia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal, and the UK, then there would be another alternative. You could drive all over mainland Asia, the Middle East, and Africa as well. You could get in your car and hit the Great Wall and the pyramids before heading to South Africa, then head back up and take a ferry across to Spain and continue through Europe. I'm talking multi-month or multi-year RV trips to actually see most of the world, starting at your house. If you really want to make it an adventure then start in Panama and head north. You could start in South America and take the Pan-American highway north, but you'll find some trouble going from Columbia to Panama in the form of 60 miles of rain forest without a road. The connection between Alaska and Russia would allow you to drive across 4 continents without a ferry, 5 if they put a road through the Darien Gap.

Comment Re:it could have been an accident (Score 1) 737

... and when that doesn't work (because the door is in "locked" state), the terrorist just threatens the (co)pilot inside to cabin to unlock or he'll kill the pilot and/or everyone else... At which point the pilot opens the door anyway.

Why would he open the door? At that point the choice is between everyone on the plane except the terrorists and the pilot dying, or everyone on the plane and probably many people on the ground dying. If you open the door they will still kill everyone on the plane when they crash it into whatever target, also potentially killing many on the ground in addition to the damage. It doesn't matter how many people on the plane they kill, the worst solution is always to open the door and give them control of the aircraft. Even if they detonate a bomb on board there's still a slim chance that the pilot could make sure the plane goes down in an uninhabited place.

Comment Re:Do It, it worked in AZ (Score 1) 886

It sounds to me like their options are:
a) Can't work as a photographer
b) Be required to violate their religion

Notwithstanding the fact that photographing a gay wedding in no way, shape, or form is a violation of any religion (feel free to support your position with published religious doctrine if you feel otherwise), but, yeah, those are pretty much their options. If they want to work as a public photographer then they lose the right to turn people away based on their own insecurities. If they want to be an insecure photographer then simply don't run a public business. Go word of mouth, you don't need a business license and the government can't tell you how to operate.

And if I was a gay couple, I sure as hell wouldn't want them photographing my wedding anyway--their heart wouldn't be in it, and they'd probably do a terrible job.

There's a major point in that statement which should make much of this discussion moot, which I agree with. If you don't like someone, don't use their services. Problem solved. That starts to break down though when the number of people offering a certain public service is small within a certain area, but in general I agree. I don't necessarily think that anyone *should* be forced to do a certain job, but I have far, far more disagreement with the notion that someone should be able to discriminate wholesale against groups of people based on their hatred. Let's face it, this isn't about religious doctrine, it's about simple hatred. I have never seen a Christian teaching which says that people need to avoid associating or coming into contact with homosexuals. It's not about religious principles, it's about hate. They just try to claim that their hate is based on religion, but the fact is that they are distorting their religion to justify their hate.

Comment Re:Do It, it worked in AZ (Score 1) 886

It's about forcing people to participate in activities that they view as evil.

It is? You mean I can just be walking down the street and be compelled to attend a hate rally, or have gay sex? Well, that definitely seems like some government overreach. You might be right.

If I owned a printing shop

OOOOHH, so not just some random person walking down the street, you're actually referring to someone operating a public business, and that person being allowed to decide that they don't want to deal with an entire group of people, even though they deal with everyone else, and the government saying that it's ok for them to do that if that's what God told them to do.

Well, I think that's pretty stupid. Either you want to run a business or you don't. If you do, then when you get your business license you agree to provide your services to "the public". Not "the public who are like you."

I would refuse to produce material for the Westboro Baptist Church.

And I would support the WBC's lawsuit against you, even while thinking they are a bunch of dickheads.

a evangelical Christian photographer should be able to politely decline to participate in a homosexual wedding

By "participate in a homosexual wedding", do you mean "take pictures of the wedding and then charge for the service?" If the photographer doesn't want to offer their services to the public then they have every right to stop being a public business.

I have a friend who is vegan, and he turned down a website job at a hunting magazine.

What does that mean? That your friend operates a public business with a business license and turned away a job that he could have done but didn't want to do because he doesn't approve of the "lifestyle choices" of the people asking for his services? Or the magazine offered him employment and he said no thanks? In one of those cases he would be operating as a public business and I would disagree with his decision.

If I owned a printing shop, I would refuse to produce material for black people.

it seems reasonable to me that a evangelical Christian photographer should be able to politely decline to participate in a black wedding

I have a friend who is racist, and he turned down a website job at a black magazine.

Seriously man, as a country we already went through all of this shit. Changing the group of people doesn't change the issue.

Comment Re:Do It, it worked in AZ (Score 1) 886

Suppose you owned a business, would you serve a white-hooded KKK Grand Wizard who came in for supplies for his next hate rally?

You're really going to compare a leader of the most recognizable hate group in the US with a homosexual?

Here's a question to pose to people saying that they should be allowed to refuse service to homosexuals based on their Christian religious views: would Jesus refuse to deal with a gay person?

Comment Re: black market (Score 1) 254

And people are actually surprised that they poofed with 12 million in bitcoins? Seriously?

Actually, I'm not sensing much surprise at all around this story. I suppose the only thing that might be surprising is that they actually had that many BTC collected at once to take. I guess they could silently disable transferring BTC out of the service for a few days until they decided to pull the plug, I guess that would help build up the coffers for the big jump (if people assume the site is still working fine and keep transferring to it). I can't imagine that anyone who knows what they're doing would sit there with an account with any decent amount of money entrusted to a site like that though.

Comment Re:Simcity screwed themselves (Score 1) 256

I eventually bought it

Which is exactly why EA doesn't give a shit about what you think. I boycotted EA a few years ago (an actual boycott, not just bitching about things and then buying them anyway; and I also tell my friends who ask why), and I've never regretted that decision, I've never felt like I have lost out on something. I enjoyed playing the first couple Dragon Age games, even though I was annoyed with some of the design decisions, but when Dragon Age 3 came out I had zero desire to put aside my boycott and buy it. I had zero desire to give them any more of my money. There are way too many good games out there to give a shit about what EA is doing. I had zero desire to give EA my money for SimCity, even though I've played several of the earlier versions. And, guess what? Now there's a city building game that I would actually enjoy playing which costs less and works correctly, and not only does EA not get a single dime for it, but I also get to support a developer who cares about the quality of what they produce.

But, by all means, if you love watching EA crank out shitty games to get your money, then you just go right on buying their shit. Bitch online how ever much you want if it makes you feel good, but you dig out your money and hand it over when they ask and you'll be able to watch them crank out piles of shit to your heart's content.

Comment Re:A turd by any other name (Score 2) 317

Microsoft writing the browser from scratch, is too little, too late.

No, not really. If this causes a further decline in the usage of buggy versions of IE then yes, do that. I doubt the new software will be completely bug-free, but hopefully it actually is from scratch (including the general design) and they don't carry over some of the same bugs.

Comment Re:Should be no problem? (Score 2) 94

1) Little Boy would probably qualify as a "dirty bomb" by today's standards, since it fissioned just a small fraction of its uranium

That's not what a dirty bomb is. A dirty bomb does not have a nuclear reaction. A dirty bomb isn't a weapon of mass destruction, it's a fear-based weapon for area denial.

Comment Re:Eqaul Protection (Score 1) 760

We have a constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law.

Right, equal protection. For example, 2 people who make wildly different sums of money every day both get pulled over for speeding by the same amount, and both of them have to pay what it takes them say 3 days to earn. That way the richer guy doesn't laugh it off while the poorer guy gets evicted. Equal protection.

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