Sounds like the best barter possible

see, I think that if you take the exact example given then you'd be correct: such an exercise might not work. (really really might not work).

but the premise given is probably fairly accurate:
real life situations that require a small group to work in concert to solve a problem will likely make them closer than a soft-situation that's been engineered to make them co-operate with results that are generally meaningless.

example: who are your closest friends? Myself -> I feel more close to the people who've been around through some fairly hairy times (and not just because I usually grow out a beard in those periods). Ya dig?

Money isn't the problem.

Money is an amplifier.

As psychedelics to a personality, so to is money to one's ability to act upon the things around them.

You're right that people aren't fair. At least not all of them. My older brother, who has provided quite a support base for me over the last 8 months is not fair. He favored myself and my younger brother, helped us with gainful employment while subsidizing our living needs. This was not to the detriment of anyone else, at-least not specifically, but was not fair.

Then again, the devil will demand what is his... My brother, again for example, uses his money as clout to try to push people around, myself included.
This doesn't work as well against me as it does most people that he interacts with, but that is because I don't have any more economic needs: I am, as of last month, debt free.
But it isn't the money that made my older brother into a manipulative dick, yes even though he helped me a great deal and I love him, he is still a dick, it's his personality to be this way.

who are you to judge who deserves to be happy?

I think such an attitude might be part of the root of your unhappiness

I was wondering that, thanks (I have no mod points, sorry)

I was wondering this yesterday... and then thought of the Don Bot from Futurama... not sure why.

Actually, I think getting rid of the Cuban embargo would be a great idea. It might put some crazy talented mechanics out of business, but then again, with how awesome they are, they'd probably be able to adapt.

Yes, they have got some good spin; however, they cannot, or at least in my opinion should not, be allowed to argue that selling the phones and selling the censorware are one in the same. A distinction must be made whereby the communications tech. is cheered, but the choice to sell the software to the government is boo-ed.

Set everything up, yes, and if the government of Iran wants to work out their own way, in house, to do what they want to censor and monitor people, fine.
But Nokia could have simply said, here's this great communications technology, sorry but we don't have anything at all that could possibly be used to prevent it from being used in ways that you don't want it to, we just don't have it.

I hope they try to defend themselves, and cut themselves on the swords they've been swallowing with their tricks of showmanship.

simple... I call it offline if I have to make the distinction

Well, even if Mr. Jobs hadn't gone to TN, all of those other people in other states still would not have gotten any livers faster.

If anything only the people of the state of Tennessee should have complaints, because he would have caused the use of a liver which otherwise might have gone to the next person in line.

And why are you presuming he has never set foot in Tennessee? Should I presume that you have never been someplace because of who you are?

Doing this actually makes total sense, take the demand, and bring it to the supply. Usually I think supply is brought to demand, but perhaps the funds to transport the supply don't exist, especially because the market is not an open one. For the record: I am against wide open markets/totally free markets.

But if Tennessee has enough livers that they can turn a person over in 48 days (I don't know if that's true, I read it in a post above), it seems like not such a bad thing to allow a person to take advantage of this fact. If you wanted the latest Nintendo game, which you could only buy in Japan... why shouldn't you be allowed to go to Japan to get it? Yes, I understand, Life-and-Death situations are more complex than this, but the spirit of the argument remains.

what if people have already come back? I don't really think this way, but, for the sake of discussion (irrational or not) ... how would you know?

I believe the question you should have asked goes something like this:

"If a bear takes a shit in the woods, does anyone care?"

At least that's how it was phrased where I grew up in Wisconsin.

I think he got the joke but decided to enrich people like me, who also got it, but didn't have as high an intrinsic response to the fact that an occurrence of having brothers named Even and Odd isn't out side every day possibility ... sort of like a British joke

crypto man, crypto.....