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Comment Re:Supreme Court did *not* say corps are people .. (Score 1) 1330

The way to prevent their resources being used for things they disagree with is to lobby for political change, just like any other individual.

Hobby Lobby's owners find it religiously objectionable to provide health care to its female employees that includes birth control. However, they apparently have no religious objections to investing 401K money in companies that make birth control. Making money off birth control = religiously fine. Providing access to birth control = sinful and must be stopped!

Does Hobby Lobby choose which stocks are included in their 401k, or do they outsource to a financial institution?

Comment Re:A win for freedom (Score 1) 1330

Go get all the abortions you want, but private businesses have the option to not pay for it.

Funny, that's been my stance my entire adult life. My sect is fine with contraceptives, but sees most abortions as sinful (obvious exceptions exist, such as terminating a pregnancy caused by rape). I share this view, but recognize that others may disagree. Just don't make me pay for it.

Comment Re:So much for that idea... (Score 1) 404

If you have a parking space for renting there, I'm pretty sure that would be illegal. Same if they decided to rent your bedroom to a tourist as a B&B. Your rental agreement provided you with your place (I'm guessing an apartment) and a parking spot. The landlord is not able to then legally rent out to someone else what you are already renting. ianal, but damn, there are some things that are pretty bloody obvious and well documented to even the public.

We didn't have assigned stalls in the parking lot (indeed, the stalls weren't even numbered). In non-game days it was first-come first-served. Each resident was allowed to register a single vehicle with the office. Temporary passes were available for visitors, and parking stickers were only enforced after hours or on game day.

Comment Re:Of course it depends... (Score 1) 163

It depends on the total travel time, time zone difference, and whether going east or west. I have almost no problems traveling between Utah and Hawaii (3 or 4 hour difference), but it took the better part of a week to adjust when flying from Sao Paulo to Honolulu (more than 28 hours traveling, 8 hours time zone difference). It took three days getting used to Sao Paulo when I flew there from Utah the first time (20 hours travel; 5 hour time zone difference), but only one day the second time (3 hour time zone difference).

Comment Re:So all of South America belongs to America, rig (Score 1) 192

Not to weigh in on the south china sea thing. But we have been the "United States OF America" since we were founded.

I have my own theory about the naming of "United States of America": the US of that time wanted to eventually take over the whole continent of America, so the name "United States of America" made complete sense at that point. For one reason or another, they stopped at the border with the current Mexico, after taking over Texas and California. I know this sounds overly ambitious now, but it was a different world back then.

Please read up on Manifest Destiny before making such a claim. This idea of expansionism didn't really take off until the 19th century.

Comment Re:Emoji? (Score 1) 108

Great, Unicode is already a fragmented mess, and now the standards organization justifies its existence by adding characters that do not exist.

An earlier poster asked why anyone thinks Unicode is fragmented. The answer in one word: fonts. Different fonts support different subsets of Unicode, because the whole thing is just too big. If you expect your font to mostly be used in Europe, you are unlikely to bother with Asian characters. if you have an Asian font, it probably has only English characters, not the rest of Europe. huge. If you have a font with complete mathematical symbols, it will include the Greek alphabet, but actual language support is a crapshoot.

You are correct in the reason that most fonts only contain a subset of Unicode code points. There are thousands of code points. Most documents will only use a small subset. Why should I have to have all those Chinese or Arabic characters when I only write in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hawaiian? People who read and write Hawaiian have fonts which support the Hawaiian letters `okina and kahako. Chinese have fonts which support the Chinese glyphs.

As for language support, that isn't a font's problem. It's up to the writer to know how to intelligently combine glyphs into words, and words into coherent thoughts.

Comment Re:Latin unification too (Score 1) 108

>

Even in HTML you only get to set one language for the entire document. Good luck writing a page in Chinese about learning Japanese. The ones I have seen tend to use GIFs to represent the characters that Unicode can't differentiate, but that means you can't copy/paste them and the fonts don't match.

Most elements in HTML accept the lang attribute. Please refer to the W3C

Comment Re:but that's the problem with the turing test... (Score 1) 309

First, that the "natural language" requirement was gamed. It deliberately simulated someone for whom English is not their first language, in order to cover its inability to actually hold a good English conversation. Fail.

That just shows the need of Turing tests in other languages. Intelligence isn't bound to a single language. I speak intelligently in English, but am only conversant in Portuguese, and would have the language skills of a 13-year-old in Spanish. I may pick up words in French or Italian, but I couldn't answer any better than a "I don't speak ___" answer. The bot claimed to be from Ukraine, so why not hold the test in Russian or Ukrainian? Make a new requirement that participants must indicate a natural language enough in advance as to find judges competent in that tongue.

Comment Re:but that's the problem with the turing test... (Score 1) 309

The point of the Turing test is that questions such as "what number rhymes with LIVE" or "in which city did the twin towers stand" are hard for a computer to understand and answer but easy for most humans. Good judges can easily invent hundreds of questions that no current AI (with perhaps the exception of Watson) could answer. What this bot did is answer all those questions with "I'm a 13 year old boy and don't speak English very well, so I don't know the answer to ". That's not a pass, that's a cop-out.

Perhaps they should have Turing Tests in different languages? The human or bot must indicate a test language before hand so that judges well-versed in that language can be assembled. I probably couldn't do any better if I was given a Turing Test in French. Having a judge familiar with a particular region would also make it harder for a bot to pass (Can you imagine trying to get an emotional rise out of a Brazilian-based bot on the topic of futebol?).

Comment Re:Racism or Thought Police? (Score 1) 398

Privacy is federally protected too.

Only in some circumstances. Please read up on expectation of privacy and right to privacy. When in public, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy (except in places such as bathrooms). You cannot control who may overhear a conversation, take your picture, or film your actions. Not even your garbage is protected, once it hits the curb.

Comment Re:Racism or Thought Police? (Score 1) 398

Actually, as a private organization, it would be up to them to decide whether to disallow openly gay players and / or owners. Perspective owners and players would need to know of such a rule (and fans would want to know about it, too). Those who don't agree with such a stance would be free to not participate in nor support such an organization. No one's legal rights would be trampled.

As per homosexual players, I think their teammates should have the strongest word, considering that most locker rooms don't have private showers. Personally, I choose which teams to support based on performance on the field and moral conduct of its owners and players. I don't take into account sexual orientation, but will note if the owner cheats on a spouse.

That is insane. If you could do that, you could do the same to people of religion (or lack of it).

Look at the Boy Scouts of America. They are a private organization who up until recently denied both boys and leaders who were openly gay. Opening up their organization to openly gay boys (but still denying openly gay leaders) was their own decision and not the result of a lawsuit (or threat thereof). The biggest sponsor of the Boy Scouts of America is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nearly every congregation of the LDS Church has a scout troop. The scout master of each of these congregation-based troops is LDS, but boys of all religious persuasions are welcome. The oath to be "morally clean" doesn't limit itself to any particular faith.

Now look to both presidential campaigns by Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney's family joined the LDS Church in the 1830s. His adversaries constantly called into question his Mormon faith. Huckabee even said that no true Christian could ever vote for a Mormon President. If people judge a candidate based on religion, why not judge corporations?

The main point I wanted to make is that individuals, and not the state, should be free to judge by whatever standard they want. Support organizations with values with which you agree while withholding support from those with which you disagree.

Comment Re:nonsense (Score 1) 398

It's not a state thing. It's not the government that's doing anything. It's a private organization that sets it's own fucking rules, dipshit. Just like some country clubs still won't let Tiger Woods become a member or even play because he's not racially "appropriate", the NBA has it's rules and he ran afoul of them, so they are punishing him. Not the state. Not the government. The club. The collection of rich old white men that he belonged to decided he had gone too far, and it had gotten too public.

This isn't a place for your libertarian tirade, so can it.

If I owned a country club, I wouldn't let Tiger become a member because of his moral misconduct and the possible damage being associated with him could cause.

Comment Re:Racism or Thought Police? (Score 2) 398

So I guess you'd be cool with it if the NBA choose to enact a "No Homosexual Players Allowed" policy? After all, they're a private organization and don't have to respect anyone's legal rights, right?

Actually, as a private organization, it would be up to them to decide whether to disallow openly gay players and / or owners. Perspective owners and players would need to know of such a rule (and fans would want to know about it, too). Those who don't agree with such a stance would be free to not participate in nor support such an organization. No one's legal rights would be trampled.

As per homosexual players, I think their teammates should have the strongest word, considering that most locker rooms don't have private showers. Personally, I choose which teams to support based on performance on the field and moral conduct of its owners and players. I don't take into account sexual orientation, but will note if the owner cheats on a spouse.

Comment Re:Behind the curve (Score 1) 1040

Even if prices end up increasing by 10% but people's income increases by 20% then those people will be able to afford more items (and useful ones, like food and clothing)

Except only those making less than $15/hr will see that increase. As someone who earns more than minimum wage it won't benefit me, and in fact will take away much of my buying power.

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