Interesting question, but there are numerous architects, and this would be protected as "fair use" for a number of reasons. See Google Maps, Google Earth, etc for similar representation of copyright-protected architecture.

Huh? We're talking about Northwestern, right?

I wonder if this is related to one of the wealthiest people in Korea. (And that therefore we are possibly supporting this cause of mis-education by eating sushi.

Of course, you're right, people are being taught to accept an appeal to authority as "proof"

As a result, those students in geometry class would say: "You can't give me an 'F'... I proved those triangles are congruent by showing you where it says so in the book!"

It's not about education. What's happening is certain groups are training people to believe things are true based on "because I say so" instead of "I can prove it". Pretty scary, if you think about the implications.

This contains a pronouncement of truth "The truth is that we cannot...." which isn't really true, and/or terms (such as "distant past", "virtual", and "real" are so poorly understood or undefined that the pronouncement fails to communicate something which actually is true.

Also, the egg did, in fact, precede the chicken, (as another poster pointed out, there were animals that laid eggs, and one of them laid the egg of the first chicken).

The statement about people "who believe science can offer more than a theory" appears to capitalize on misunderstanding of the scientific method, as if a "theory" were a "hypothesis". This statement (and the rest of the post) also appears to completely discount empirical evidence, (without which, oddly enough, "faithful" people could not learn or develop "divine" explanations.)

Hmmm.... I wonder if the major effect of this will be for people to use more live musicians instead of recorded music.

As long as the purchaser or recipient understands the limitation before buying or accepting the gift, there's nothing wrong with selling or giving the modified device.

If he misrepresented the device as being in "like new" condition, that would be different.

I bet HP doesn't want to fight a PR battle with a major customer and potential customer. Anything substantive they say about this would probably be in the course of a formal investigation.

Hmmm... Maybe I'm reading this wrong and this is really a political battle between the Comptroller and the Deputy mayor for Operations, where the Comptroller is trying to pin the blame for what he asserts is an overly expensive project on the Operations guy.

No, in other words, the Comptroller is deliberately making it SOUND as if HP and NYC weren't using change control documents.

I don't know what the political situation is, but I'm SURE that the comptroller's office is trying to assert that cost overruns are the fault of somebody other than the city, and trying to force the contract's cost penalty (to the contractor) provisions to kick in, thus saving the city money.

It's not strictly true that "no public insurance companies sell flood insurance" but you're generally right, it's not like a traditional insurance model because of the federal legislation regarding flood insurance requirements and the involvement of FEMA. From the page linked here:
"Today, flood insurance is available in more than 20,000 communities and U.S. territories and there are about 100 private insurance companies nationally that offer flood insurance backed by the government. Although federal assistance is still a vital part of disaster recovery, the NFIP saves the United States taxpayer millions of dollars every year."

Shush, you... If you give them the idea, you KNOW they'll do exactly that!

A fake moon landing? ;-)

According the the Deputy Mayor for Operations, nothing was overbilled.

The reason these giant IT projects almost always cost more than the original bid is that the purchasing entity (NYC in this case) frequently either hides or isn't aware of some of the items that will affect the cost.

In a bad economic environment, this means there's ALWAYS someone saying "that company screwed this system up, delivered late, overbudget, and violated the terms of the contract!" Sometimes it's true that the contractor screwed up, but frequently the purchaser makes it impossible to deliver according to original cost projections.

Yikes; said that last part backward. Should have been:

"Therefore, most insurance companies will (maybe already do) refuse to write flood insurance policies in NC. The only way people would be able to get flood insurance is through a public pool (huh-huh) backed by FEMA."