Certainly obesity is more complicated than a single /. post can encompass, and I know I oversimplified for the sake of brevity. The point remains, however, that offering weight loss help is not remotely similar to offering to "cure" for loving the "wrong" type of person.

From the summary:

Replace "anti-homosexual" with almost any other "anti-GROUP" and it would be called hate.

Grouping people together and rallying against them is hate. No matter how nicely you word it. I realize this particular app isn't all that offensive in a direct way. The indirect implications, however, are obviously quite inflammatory.

Really? You think products to help people lose weight or stop smoking are even remotely in the same league as a "gay cure?"

How about a "cure" for being black? Or a "cure" for being a Christian?

Being overweight is the result of poor choices. Yeah, it sucks when people get picked on for it, but it is an unhealthy condition that can be changed. Offering people help with that process is not hate. Being gay is not a disease and it has no cure. Telling people that a basic part of who they are is a disease is hate.

Maybe Apple shouldn't ban apps at all, I'd prefer that myself. They've already started down that road, however, and hate speech isn't exactly an unreasonable thing to ban, if you are going to ban anything.

Ripping CDs for personal use is covered by fair use.

DVD ripping is only illegal because you have to circumvent encryption to do so, and the DMCA can then be used to do an end-run around your fair use rights. Audio CDs are not encrypted, so they are still fully covered under fair use.

I'm sorry, what?

By that same logic, city, county, or state prisons can legally beat and torture their prisoners, unless local law specifically prohibits it. No. Just No.

All those rights provided to citizens of the United States by the constitution and its amendments apply equally in every jurisdiction in the country, it doesn't matter if the police involved are local or federal.

Are you positive the ID request was related to the form of payment? Target has become very strict about checking ID for age restricted items, every time, for every customer.

The only time you should be asked for ID in relation to a credit card at Target is if the POS prompts the cashier, which it will only do if the authorization system sends back a message that something fishy might be going on with the card. My understanding is that this situation is perfectly acceptable - it is the credit card company's authorization system that requests the ID check, not the store. For a routine transaction at Target the cashier never even touches the card, let alone asks for ID.

Sure you can, we even have a proper name for it in geometry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_(mathematics)#Ray

You are assuming that the cheating accusation was made purely on a behavioral basis, and that is not a reasonable assumption to make. If it was determined the kid was cheating on a technical basis, the kid's autism is completely irrelevant.

It is dipping well below freezing at night in Quincy right now, but this is the coldest part of the year. Central Washington isn't exactly cool in the summer months - the average highs for Quincy in July are in the mid-80s, and the record highs are pushing 110F.

Lets look at that quote again shall we?

(emphasis mine)

If you can't wrap your head around the fact that any person who has already set foot in your store is a potential sale, you'd make a terrible salesperson. Checking prices is not a guarantee that the customer is going to shop somewhere else. If your prices are even in the same ballpark, there is a decent chance they'll pick up the item *now* because they are already there, and it is convenient. If the staff was pleasant, that is another point in their favor.

The entire issue here is that some sales geek at Toys'r'us made an *assumption* that someone checking prices on their phone will definitely not make any purchases while they are in the store. By making that assumption, they probably swayed that customer away from making any purchases, and in fact, they have now generated negative word of mouth. Harassing shoppers is a pretty terrible way to move product. I work for one of those "big" B&M stores, and if I saw a sales associate harassing a customer for checking prices on their phone, they'd be in the office for a quick refresher on the benefits of friendliness.

Frankly, taking your money to another business, be it online or another retailer, is never unethical. No one has any obligation to keep a store in business just because they happened to walk in and take up their floorspace for a few minutes. The store is responsible for their own survival, and part of that is balancing operating costs against actual sales. Plenty of retailers are surviving just fine in the face of online (and mail-order before that) competition so far, the ability to check prices real-time instead of ahead of time is *not* going to push a currently profitable retailer over the edge now. Smart retailers are looking for ways to utilize their customer's smart phones, instead of waving their hands in panic that now they can get real-time pricing data.

Even if you grant that it is unethical to shop in a retail store and buy online - and that is a big stretch - any retailer who harasses their customers for shopping intelligently deserves to go out of business. Period.

Look, people shop around, they did before the internet, and they did before mobile phones. There is nothing any retailer can do to stop this.

Being grumpy at a customer for using the tools at their disposal to shop around more efficiently is simply driving that customer away. Treating your customer with respect, on the other hand, *might* make you a sale even if your prices aren't the absolute lowest.

A sales person calling over a supervisor to bother a guest in their store for price shopping is extremely disrespectful. You call over a manager for suspicious activities, or clear violations of posted store polices (non-service pets, inappropriate clothing) NOT because you are worried the customer might find out you don't have the lowest price and go shop elsewhere. They might have passed on a product at your store due to price, but now they almost certainly will because you harassed them. How is that a win for your store?

Really, the light was missing and I didn't notice?

It was a light truck, not a passenger car.

The point, of course, is that I never had to retrofit a center brake light.

Even if this passes, there is no way it will prevent all accidents while reversing.

How many of those 292 deaths are caused by inadequate safety features, and how many are caused by pure carelessness? If you're reversing fast enough to KILL SOMEONE you probably need to slow down and pay attention.

Must have been a state law, I was driving an 87' pickup with no center brake light until just a few years ago. This was in WA.