eesmith
Joined 9 years ago
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Comment · 4 hours ago
Comment · 4 hours ago
With my project maintainer hat on, I don't think putting it into sqlite is the correct approach.
For one, it means extra work by the sqlite developers, to track the ever-changing Unicode spec, or your releases.
For another, the MIT license of the generated code is incompatible with the public domain dedication of sqlite.
For a third, sqlite is often part of a larger system, which will likely have its own way of doing Unicode. If there's a mismatch between the supported Unicode versions then there may be subtle errors not easily caught in testing. While if only ASCII is supported, leaving it up to the application programmer to implement the correct collation method, then that's easy to detect and resolve.
These are just the thoughts I have. I have no affiliation with the sqlite project.
Comment · 5 hours ago
How are you distributing SQLite now?
That is, do you compile and distribute the version from sqlite.org or do you depend on someone else to package it for you?
If the former, then change the compile flags.
If the latter, isn't the problem that your distro/packaging provider didn't enable the flags you wanted? Complain to them.
As a quick look, I see https://github.com/karlb/sqlite-icu claims "includes a loadable icu extension module for sqlite. This allows other python packages to use this extension without requiring dependencies outside of the python ecosystem". I've never tried it.
There are also alternate sqlite bindings for Python, like https://github.com/coleifer/cysqlite .
Comment · 6 hours ago
https://sqlite.org/lang_corefunc.html#lower
"The lower(X) function returns a copy of string X with all ASCII characters converted to lower case. The default built-in lower() function works for ASCII characters only. To do case conversions on non-ASCII characters, load the ICU extension."
FAQ item (18) Case-insensitive matching of Unicode characters does not work, at https://sqlite.org/faq.html :
"The default configuration of SQLite only supports case-insensitive comparisons of ASCII characters. The reason for this is that doing full Unicode case-insensitive comparisons and case conversions requires tables and logic that would nearly double the size of the SQLite library. The SQLite developers reason that any application that needs full Unicode case support probably already has the necessary tables and functions and so SQLite should not take up space to duplicate this ability.
"Instead of providing full Unicode case support by default, SQLite provides the ability to link against external Unicode comparison and conversion routines. The application can overload the built-in NOCASE collating sequence (using sqlite3_create_collation()) and the built-in like(), upper(), and lower() functions (using sqlite3_create_function()). The SQLite source code includes an "ICU" extension that does these overloads. Or, developers can write their own overloads based on their own Unicode-aware comparison routines already contained within their project."
Comment · 2 days ago
Nicely done!
With "else he may" as a search time, I found other examples in archive.org, like https://archive.org/details/sim_christian-intelligencer_1835... from 1835 .
Comment · 2 days ago
Ngrams only shows the overall use statistics, and not how "else" is used.
The Wiktionary entry at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/else lists three use forms;
Adjective: When all else fails, read the instructions
Adverb: How else can it be done?
Conjunction: Then the Wronskian of f and g must be nonzero,
else they could not be linearly independent.
The "someone else" and "nothing else" examples you listed are the adjective form.
The "or" in "or else" is the conjunction, not the "else".
You should be looking for something like " "Yea , but what am I ? a scholar, or a schoolmaster, else some youth".
Another thing to check would be if earlier uses were only in binary exclusive cases, like "One if by land, else two if by sea", or also with 3 or more terms, like "One if by land, two if by sea, else three if by air."
I don't know how to carry out this sort of search.
Comment · 2 days ago
The author didn't say it was not English.
The author wrote: "I can't use "else" as a conjunction in normal speech, only in computer programs."
No doubt people use 'else' as a conjunction now, due to the influence of programming.
To show the author is completely wrong requires finding pre-1959 uses of 'else' in a conjunction.
Comment · 3 days ago
Right, but we're talking EEOC law.
The Civil Rights Act which created the EEOC does not require or permit an employer to break the law to accommodate a request, even if it is reasonable and with no burden.
Instead, the law must be challenged directly.
Comment · 3 days ago
Read up on EEOC regulation and you'll see your example won't fly. Exceptions must be reasonable and not cause undue hardship on the employer.
"An accommodation may cause undue hardship if it is costly, compromises workplace safety, decreases workplace efficiency, infringes on the rights of other employees, or requires other employees to unwillingly do more than their share of potentially hazardous or burdensome work." - https://www.eeoc.gov/religious-discrimination
Otherwise we would all be joining a religion which require 360 days of religious festivities each year.
Comment · 3 days ago
There's also the bit about undue burden.
We see this with people who believe it is a religious requirement to share their faith at work, even when their co-workers say they don't want to hear it.
We see this with people who say their religious belief says they don't take orders from a women, even if that woman is their boss.
If your transhumanist religion compels you to share PII with your machines in a way which breaks the law, then there's likely an undue burden.
If it means you need access to a power plug during lunch so your devices can scan your brain for 10 minutes - almost certainly not an undue burden.
Comment · 3 days ago
I can understand why someone opposed to copyright may be ignorant of the details, but you should know that you were the one who implicitly brought up "moral rights", which is a legal term associated with copyright. Quoting the Berne Convention, Article 6bis:
"Independent of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to the said work, which would be prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation."
Those non-economic rights are referred to as moral rights, and you apparently want to get rid of them as well.
As the old saying goes, "You are unique, just like everyone else." Which is why I never said the current time has nothing unique, but rather "There's nothing special enough".
The player piano roll transformed copyright, with White-Smith Music Publishing Company v. Apollo Company leading to the Copyright Act of 1909.
The Linotype machine, microfilm, the photocopier, the cassette tape, the floppy disk, the internet, hip-hop sampling, p2p file sharing - every single one of these challenged existing ideas of copyright. Some of these also got people to call for copyright abolition.
Comment · 4 days ago
Then lead with that, and don't try to justify it based on some perceived cultural shift.
Comment · 4 days ago
We've entered many new ages of how information is created, used, and distributed over the last 250 years. There's nothing special enough about this new era which justifies throwing out the old ideas of moral and economic rights of an author.
Comment · 4 days ago
As tested in Romania.
With no indication of how the subjects were selected.
Social class and musical education are obvious confounding variables, while they only looked at age and gender.
They cite Virgil Griffith, which https://brainvolts.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/boxtr... categorizes as "noted Internet data miner Virgil Griffith". https://digitalcommons.calvin.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... says he scraped data from Facebook and compared it to average school SATs. There's a Wikipedia page about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Griffith . Looks like he got out of prison last year.
Google Scholar knows of no citations to the paper, nor favorable reviews for Griffith's analysis.
The JEP paper, available directly at https://jep.ro/images/pdf/cuprins_reviste/74_art_4.pdf , comes across to me, a non-expert, as low quality.
Comment · 4 days ago
Good point! All of the children I spot-checked (about 5) from "And the Children Shall Lead" are still alive.
> Last year, Adrian Ramsay, then a Green co-leader, criticised government support for Sizewell C. “The money being spent on this nuclear gamble would be far better spent on insulating and retrofitting millions of homes, bringing down energy bills and keeping people warmer and more comfortable,” he said.
Classic negawatt approach, to use Amory Lovins' term.
Seems, though, like most people would rather build impressive infrastructure than improve what's already there. Grid expansion and new energy production development have far more cachet than paying a bunch of people with white vans to go around fixing up houses.