Old RPG nick aside, I'm an American so I think my comment would be more self deprecating on a country wide scale. Having grown up around a family business I stopped being surprised at what wouldn't be stolen out of a retail store. I live in a farming area with many 'on your honor' farm stands. Take produce from the stand and leave money in a coffee can type setups. People steal the money cans on a regular enough basis. For these reasons and more I couldn't imagine letting people scan their products when they put things in a cart and it not being massively abused. I'd be overjoyed to be proven wrong.
I agree with you on the self checkouts. While they're sometimes quick for a handful of items, If it's more than a few items then you should get a discount equal to an employee's wage. BUT I'm all for scanning an object when I put it in the cart and just paying for it when I leave, no double handling of products by putting in the cart, taking out to be scanned, putting back in the cart. Almost walking right out the door after finding what I wanted was very quick.
For tech oriented startups location ends up being a big deal. You have to appeal to investors and being in the middle of a cow pasture is a deal breaker. Also from a population percentage there are not as many angel investors around to get something even going. Then staff like having entertainment options that big cities can offer.
There are a few incubators in some of the smaller cities that are still running. Offhand I've read of them in Iowa, Philadelphia, there's even one in Detroit. Not high cost areas. Not the easiest place to attract funding or talent.
Christianity has a logical and consistent framework, despite the fact that people disagree on various things.
If you're talking about the bible it is not a consistent framework. Even the gospels don't agree with each other on the death of Jesus, a central tenant of the religion. Personally I like the Gospel of Matthew. In that account, and only that account, an unknown number of zombies also rose from the dead along with Jesus and went into the city.
The sky is the limit on what would be created with an open source backend DB. I'd put a cam in the yard and in my car. Sounds amusing.
I always thought it was Found On Road Dead. Or : Recent studies show that 95% of all Ford vehicles are still on the road. The other 5% were towed home.
My mother bought a Ford Explorer with a chrome running board option. Before the 5 year bumper to bumper car warranty expired the chrome was noticeably starting to flake. Except the bumper to bumper excluded that option.. the chome option was only a 3 year warranty. I do have to give it to the Ford engineers to be able to devise a fail date just slightly longer than warranty. Now that's quality work.
BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'.