blacks are over 56% of Montgomery's population[1] while gays are less than 4% of the national population.[2]

[1]http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/01/01101.html
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States

I don't give a damn what they think their religion says they are entitled to. Unless that can prove that the existence of homosexuality actually harms their rights they can limit their bigotry to speech and not legislation.

Yes, plenty of well deserved outrage mostly from non-homosexuals. Assuming the group was not the benefit of a mass movement how do you propose that 3.8% of a population[1] can significantly impact a local economy or business?

The reason that so many people leap to the LGBT communities defense is because they correctly surmise that a threat to freedom and just anywhere is a threat to freedom and injustice everywhere.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States

Your brave protectors who can do no wrong and should be trusted to stoically carry out their duties to flag and country. Now give us our backdoors you little shits.

This act is clearly targeted at homosexuals. An economic group that has far less influence than the much larger minority, based on percentage, of blacks in Montgomery. Any boycott by homosexuals could certainly be ignored by the businesses of Indiana as they would have negligible impact on the cake industry. Do you suggest that because homosexuals don't have the same economic clout as blacks did on the bus industry in Montgomery that they do not deserve the right to be served like a human being in a public business?

I would also like to remind you of the LAWS that came about because of that bus boycott to preserve the rights and freedoms of those who engaged in civil disobedience to obtain them, as it is because of those laws that the benefits from the bus boycott still exist today. Namely the lack of "whites only" signs. I would rather not repeat those times with blacks replaced with "fags."

That is fine when we are talking about a private contract between two people, but as eleventy billion people on this forum have pointed out it is not ok for a public business to refuse service based on skin color, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. A business is a public facing entity and must abide by the rules of non discrimination.

The difference in this case as I understand it is that the hospital was legally required to lock that door then they failed to properly secure the door which resulted in the theft of sensitive information. In your example there is no such burden placed on the workmen. They are not required by law to ensure the safety of the homes that they work at unlike the hospital. A better example would be to compare the hospital to a bank. If a bank is robbed and all of there customer's money is stolen is the bank not responsible for the damages caused to those customers for failing to properly secure their money? I would think that they would be, and make no mistake, having such confidential data stolen can be just as devastating if your credit rating gets nailed or your accounts get drained. As far as standing I don't think there is a question that there are damages here. The time and effort alone to rectify all of the locked accounts, get cards reissued, and reverse charges is plenty of damage to justify a civil suite.

Yeah social issues would be the limiting factor here, but there are some relatively stable African countries. I am wondering more about the technical feasibility. How much ground coverage would we need to change the water cycle at the edge of a desert?

Actually now that I am thinking about this could it be possible to use massive solar farms to combat desertification? I know that it's a huge problem in west Africa where desert encroachment has been taking over the precious agricultural land and causing food shortages. If you could boost the shade amount in the desert which would theoretically increase the amount of plant life while cooling the surface it could be possible, when done on a massive scale, to reclaim stretches of desert. All while developing cheap energy for their respective people. Can someone with some knowledge on this subject weigh in?

I pity the poor service men that will have to maintain these panels because every snake, lizard and cactus will be fighting for the shade. You are exactly right that this will become the metropolis of the desert.

As another point what if we put a solar farm in the Atacama Desert? As the driest place on earth there is hardly any life at all even on a bacterial level so would it be habitat destruction to turn the whole thing into a solar farm?

I eat one per month, but a new study has shown that there isn't a correlation to health benefits after all.

"In fact, most legacy code cannot be unit-tested, since the code has never been designed to be tested."

We are running into this issue right now where I work. We have two different systems we use to determine pricing and one of them is closing on 30 years old. The code has several access points that mean unit tests have to done in several different formats in order to properly assess the changes making automated testing a nightmare.

In our other system we don't have the same problem and have a program that allows us to pull data straight from prod to test the changes with a bombardment of real data before ever releasing our code into the testing environment. Needless to say this environment is far more stable.

If I had a recommendation for the poster it would be to establish a similar automated testing tool that would allow you to compare the results of large amounts of production data after each change is introduced to have a much higher chance of catches fringe cases and not piling up a stockpile of bugs to be discovered at a later date.

First, who do you think it was that wrote those anti compete laws in the first place? Giant ISPs

Second, who do you think is campaigning for decreased regulation? Giant ISPs

Third, what kinds of regulation do you think these people have in mind when they say they want less regulation? consumer protection laws, NOT anti competitive laws.

The best and most stable economies are tightly regulated.

I second the nervousness about the cloud, and would like to add my own trepidation about the closer tying of licenses to individual machines and subscription payments. $10 says that the so called free upgrade to windows 10 from windows 7 will entail a mandatory subscription a year after installing.

Dexter's Laboratory