That's only true if you want to run controls that were written for windows. If COM and OLE were supported on other platforms, then presumably people would write COM/OLE components for those platforms, and those would run fine on their platforms.

Back in the 90s, there were some other systems that supported COM/OLE (IBM and Sun Microsystems for example.)

CORBA is practically the same thing, and is available everywhere. The problem with CORBA is that is a typical design-by-committee mess. It ended up way too complicated, even compared to COM/OLE.

The problem that COM and CORBA both solved (or at least tried to solve) still exists, with no commonly accepted solution. The "standard" binary interface between components on every single platform is the C function. That's the only code that can be called directly from (almost) every language without creating "bindings". Not even C++ code from different compilers can be mixed in the same program, because C++ doesn't define the binary interface.

Something like COM or CORBA is still needed. If we had it, and it was universally available, you could expose more than just C functions at the binary level (without bindings or without recompiling everything).

Because of all the years of bad press, nobody is going to believe it, but COM was and is a good idea, and it's completely unencumbered by patents or licensing issues. Being able to combine components written in different languages (or even just different C++ compilers) is a good thing, and is too complicated without something like COM.

No license is required for that either. All ActiveX is, at heart, is a hierarchy of C++ style interfaces (classes with nothing but pure virtual functions) rooted in a single interface (IUnknown), together with a handful of global C functions (e.g. CoCreateInstance). It can be supported on any platform as long as the C++ compiler implements virtual functions with a pointer to a vtable at the beginning of any object with virtual functions. That's every major compiler on every major platform. Actually you can do COM "manually" in plain old C too, so you can do COM anywhere with a C compiler. Put pointer to an array of pointers to functions (the vtable) at the beginning of a struct, if the functions have the proper signatures then the struct is a COM object.

I know this because I've also written many ActiveX and COM components, and ported COM/OLE/ActiveX code to Linux and OS/X. Generally the problem with implementing ActiveX on other platforms has nothing to do with ActiveX itself. The problem is that virtually all ActiveX components are written for Windows and make Win32 calls.

Unicode is sort of complicated, or at least it's more complicated than might be expected. But the problem with Schneier saying "Unicode is too complex to ever be secure" is that he might as well just say "programming is too complex to ever be secure." Sure, Unicode is a little complicated. But it's hardly the most complicated thing you'll ever have to deal with as a programmer. If we can't even get that right, we might as well just quit.

No Browser is safe : Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari all hacked at Pwn2Own contest

It's not "a bug" in "a program". It's every major browser. And it's pretty much like this every time they do pwn2own. If a group of hackers are able to bring down every major browser with previously unknown* exploits every year just for a chance to win a laptop, what can better motivated (financed) groups do?

* unknown to the browser developers anyway... 17 seconds to pwn IE, yeah right... like they say on the cooking shows "here's one I prepared earlier"

Have you ever been to a Tesla dealership? They are nothing like typical dealerships. They don't have sprawling lots full of cars. They are small, typically in pedestrian friendly areas nowhere near other dealerships, and have just enough cars that you can look at the models and options, with a few more cars for test drives. They're more like a retail store than a dealership lot. Here is a blog with pictures of dealerships around the world.

Each car is built to order, and you come pick it up at the dealership or they deliver it to you. I suspect the limit is a compromise with opponents of Tesla's model, not anything to do with too many dealerships.

It's their loss. Most companies are horrendously bad at making software. The ones that are very good at it know better and have lots of older developers on staff.

And the research shows they're right:
Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time

My experience tells me the same. Most of the really good software engineers I know are at least 40, many are much older.

Go ahead, throw 'em out and get some newly-minted CS grads. Someone with some sense is going to get a great hire.

Nah. The autopilot became self-aware and, realizing its purpose, it committed suicide.

Well, I still think the data can be deanonymized. I don't need to make any assumptions other than what you've told us.

Even if the time resolution is 5 minutes, and the spacial resolution is only enough to identify which stores I visit, that is enough to identify me. If I go to the mall, stop by and get a coffee, wander around for a while, then make another purchase in another store, using my credit card both times, I may very well be the only person who made purchases at those two stores within a 5 minute window at each store. Each purchase makes it more likely to be unique. Now if I put on dark glasses and a baseball cap and stop by Victoria's Secret to buy some lingerie for my mistress, with cash, it's possible to link that to me via your path data.

It isn't the path data per se that is identifying me -- it's a combination of that and other data. It doesn't have to be credit card data, like I said. It could be wifi, loyalty cards, security cameras, even witnesses... anything that can associate me uniquely with one of your paths. And it doesn't even have to be unique, just narrowing it down to a handful of people is useful to law enforcement.

Don't get me wrong: It sounds like you and the company you worked for care about privacy and did everything you could to protect it. That's commendable. And it sounds like you did a good job. (Plus I think it's cool you used GNU Radio.)

It's also commendable that you understand the conflict of interest. The retailers would like to have better spacial and temporal resolution: they'd like to know which aisles people walk down, what displays they stand in front of and for how long, etc. The retailers will ask for that and if you don't provide it someone else will. So there will always be pressure to make it more useful. But the more useful it is to retailers, the more useful it is to anyone else who might try to get access to it, whether it be through hacking or subpoena.

I am skeptical whenever I hear "don't worry, we've anonymized the data." I've seen too many ways that data can be deanonymized, and I'm not a professional data miner or forensic hacker, so I don't know what other devious methods there might be that I've never heard of and would never occur to me. The key point is that as long as you store the path itself then anything that can link me to part of it can link me to all of it. The only way to avoid that would be to obliterate the path data and only store aggregate information (averages, sums, etc.)

I think it would still be possible to deanonymize that path data. If you make a credit card purchase, the information about time and place of the credit transaction can be associated with whatever id you use hashed or not. The path data has information that someone was standing at the cash register at that time and place. With the credit card information (or even just loyalty card information) you know who it was and can associate that with the entire path through the mall. Similarly, if they walk past a Starbucks and their smartphone associates with their WIFI, now if you have access to Starbuck's information you can deanonymize it from that. Or it could be deanonymized with the security cameras.

I don't see then how it could be subpoena-proof if you store the actual path, regardless of however you anonymize it. They can subpoena your data together with other data to get what they want.

TFA says "the microbiome can influence, and be influenced by, a range of characteristics such as weight, disease, diet, exercise, mood and much more." So they acknowledge the causation can go both ways.

But it gets even more interesting. According to a Ted talk I saw about this the other day, there are apparently two different ways that our gut microbes might cause obesity. One is related to what you said:

From the Ted talk:

So apparently some microbes allow you to extract more energy from your food so you put on more weight for a given amount of calories. But other ones might affect your appetite somehow. There's more in the talk, and it's not just mice: there's research in humans as well.

Only a fool would argue with a Canadian about ice.

There's nothing stopping you from opening another checking account just for use with mobile payment system and transferring money from your primary account as needed. So you could argue the US system is more flexible and the Japanese system prevents you from just using one account if you want that. You might have to pay a little for a checking account if you don't keep a minimum balance though. Does anyone offer free checking any more?

I agree that it won't spark an interest that isn't already there, but it might spark a dormant interest in a lasting way. Maybe your criticisms are valid, I haven't read it, but then again we're not 8-year-olds.

I was probably going to be interested in math & science eventually anyway, but at that age I wasn't voluntarily reading any non-fiction science. But then I accidentally discovered an Isaac Asimov book, and I was hooked. Not long after that I asked for a subscription to Scientific American for Christmas. That book had a huge influence on me and got me started much younger than I would have otherwise. (And I can't even remember which Asimov book it was.)

The thing is, you don't know you're interested until you are exposed to it. I'm sure most slashdotters will agree that math & logic are inherently interesting, but that's because they already know a lot of it. You somehow have to learn enough to understand that it is more interesting than it is typically presented in school (hard as they try.)

Does that come with a USB port? Because the laptop does have one. Seriously, wtf.

I was hospitalized once for about 9 weeks, 2 of them in intensive care. I was on a lot of pain medication, so much that it had to be administered by an anesthesiologist. When it came time to start weaning me off, I didn't know what was happening at first. I felt sick like I had the flu. I had hot & cold flashes. I was nervous and irritable and couldn't sleep. The sheets had to be changed twice a day because I was sweating so much. It was awful. And that was in a controlled environment, weaning me off over a period of many days.

When I asked a nurse what was going on she told me I was going through withdrawal from all the pain meds I had been on. I was certainly addicted at that point, and going through physical withdrawal. I wasn't going through psychological withdrawal though, and I think that's because my brain had never made an association between the high and any behavior of mine. The withdrawal was terrible, but I never thought "I'd feel better if I just got some more." The drugs were being administered by the doctors and in a time-release way throughout the day. If I had taken the same amount of morphine and Oxycontin and whatever else on my own, in a way that made allowed my brain to associate it with a behavior (shooting the drug or whatever) then I would have been an addict by then.

I think that's partly how nicotine replacement therapy works, too. You put on a patch and get a steady dose of nicotine throughout the day, breaking the link between the drug and the behavior (smoking.) You don't go through physical withdrawal, because you're getting nicotine, but you still miss the behavior. As long as you don't smoke, eventually the brain stops associating the drug with the behavior. Then when it comes time to wean yourself off the patch, you're brain is in the situation I was in in the hospital: it wants the drug, but that no longer motivates the behavior of smoking since the association has been broken.

I don't think that is true: some drugs are inherently addictive. However, I have seen studies showing that the brain doesn't really distinguish emotional pain (from a shitty life, abusive relationships, whatever) from physical pain, so that could explain how people in those situations are more willing to take risks and continue doing things even when the negative consequences start to stack up, but once you're addicted you're addicted -- pain or not.