I see two problems here. First, you seem to be contradicting yourself. Either you believe it's OK to discriminate or you don't. If you think a restaurant should have the right to discriminate based on sexual orientation, race, religion or attire, than you believe discrimination is OK. You may not practice such discrimination yourself, but your statement makes it clear that you don't have a problem when other people do practice such discrimination.

The second issue I note is a little more subtle, but I think it too deserves attention. Specifically, discrimination based on something like attire, which is relatively easy for anyone to alter to meet a businesses' requirement, is inherently different from discrimination based on an inflexible aspect like ethnicity. In other words, I can change my shirt and tie without too much trouble, but I can't ever change the racial makeup of my parents, grandparents, etc. Conflating these two types of discrimination is, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest. It leaves people with the false impression that restrictions on 'discrimination' are simply trying to limit or curtail the ability of businesses to make *any* choices regarding their clientele, customers, policies, etc. That's not what's going on here. The question at hand is, "In Arizona, will a restaurant be able to post a sign that reads, 'We refuse to serve gays.'"

It's generally not a good idea to commemorate a living person because they still have the potential to end up in a scandal or do something embarrassing.

I plugged my iPad into the USB charger in the plane ...

What planes/airlines have built-in USB ports? That aside, it's interesting that it's more than just a dumb USB-shaped port (akin to the wall dongles that merely convert a wall-outlet into a USB port). The fact that you got that message implies there's actually a computer on the other end in addition to just power.

But the real world throws-out false and misleading claims all the time. If we don't teach students how to think critically, how to weigh evidence-backed claims against claims based solely on authority, culture, religion, etc., than how are students ever supposed to gain the skills required to make reasoned choices when encountering conflicting 'facts' for the first time?

I dearly hope schools teach Holocaust denial in history class, and the conjugation of French verbs in English class. Examining the reasons why Holocaust denial persists against overwhelming evidence to the contrary can teach far more about why the Holocaust happened in the first place than any mere regurgitation of the historical facts involved. In the same vein, comparing and contrasting English verb conjugation against the French equivalent can serve as a stepping-stone to understanding how language actually works, which can in turn lead to a whole host of fascinating ideas you might never have even imagined existed otherwise. So yes -- I do hope schools are teaching exactly these kinds of things.

You're talking about teaching science instead of religion in the classroom; what I'm suggesting is that we'd be better off if we simply taught the scientific method instead. Ultimately, I don't believe that science lies only in facts like the weight of an electron, or the density of water at one atmosphere, or concepts like the Theory of Evolution. At least as I understand it, what science is truly about is a way of looking at the world around us, thinking about how that world is actually put together, and then testing those thoughts to see if there's any evidence to support them. I think if you can teach core concepts like that to students, and get them to understand what it really means, than you'll have armored those students against the myriad of dogmatic 'truths' the world is all too likely to throw at them.

I guess it's good to know that I can respect a well-crafted response, even when it comes from a source I don't respect.

That should have been obvious. Occasionally, people I generally strongly disagree with say or write something I do agree with -- just like a broken clock is right twice a day.

More likely that Google would build an office in SF (raising land prices even higher). Some tech companies have done that already.

They've already done that but it's nowhere near as big as the Googleplex in Mountain View. That aside, at least then they're paying SF city taxes. Also, I don't know if they have employee shuttles for their SF office or if their employees just take Muni like everybody else.

It would be ironic if a Google employee waiting for a Muni bus on his way to the SF office was delayed by a Google bus blocking the bus stop while picking up for a trip to Mountain View.

It easily beats having those people all driving themselves.

True, but what I think the protesters are thinking is that if companies eliminated the shuttles (or shrank their radius so that SF was outside of it), then most workers, rather than endure a multi-hour commute each day, would simply move closer to work (and, more specifically, outside of SF city limits). It might increase traffic in/around Mountain View, but the companies could run local shuttles with a 10-mile (instead of 35-mile) radius to alleviate that problem. But it would no longer be SF's problem.

It is legal for their buses to use the bus stops.

No it's not. It's not legal for any vehicle other than a city bus to use a city bus stop. At least that's the way it's been up until very recently. Now, the bus operators will have to pay to use the stops.

This program, 215, has the ability to stop the next 9/11 and if you added emails in there it would make it even more effective.

So terrorists will simply use snail mail. I don't think they're in that much of a hurry.

The article is really about a "Panic" button, not a 911 call.

I'm aware of that. I was simply responding to the parent poster who did post about 911.

And then maybe get a better circle of friends.

You'd be surprised to learn that there's even dumber reasons people call ...

Why don't they tack on a $100 "911 call charge" to the caller's phone bill for every call? That ought to make the idiots learn pretty quickly.

The charge would be waived if any emergency personnel are actually dispatched.

Let's be real about this -- if the N.S.A. wants data on any particular Yahoo user, or on all Yahoo users for that matter, it's not going to make one wit of difference if Yahoo encrypts its data or not. All the N.S.A. has to do is issue a national security letter, and Yahoo will cough-up whatever they got. Yahoo's encrypting the data on disk or in transit through their datacenters is little more than a pathetic attempt to lure customer's into believing that Yahoo is doing something to protect their data when, in fact, there's little Yahoo can do to prevent the N.S.A. for getting its hands on your data.

This information is perhaps 2 years out of date, but back for one of my projects, when we switched from g++ to Intel C++, our software got about twice as fast with no other changes. It got even faster when we took advantage of SSE3 instructions.

Look at the unregulated sections of autobahn. Unlimited speed limits, safer than U.S highways.

Just a guess, but German drivers are probably better trained and follow conventions (such as not driving in the passing lane or moving over when somebody behind you flashes his headlights) than American drivers.

I see so many people who drive in the passing lane for no reason and others who are mystified as to what a headlight-flash means. Either that, or they're just being jerks. Either way, I can't see unregulated speed limits working in the US.