The only assumption you should be making is that nothing is secure.

Or they're legacy tools. There are a large number of such tools out there that do various jobs, where having an unnecessary BOM is a liability.

If you're compiling for some legacy embedded hardware, for example, I have little doubt that its compiler would choke on BOM characters, and you may not have access to the source to fix it. And just because YOU don't need or use such tools hardly means that nobody out there does.

Yaz

This is one of those sticky situations. For UTF-8, the Unicode standard discourages the use of a BOM, unless you're converting from a different Unicode format that requires a BOM. The whole purpose of a BOM is to describe the byte order used to generate the file data, however UTF-8 data is broken up into 8-bit code units, and thus endianness doesn't play a role. You simply read the stream one byte at a time.

Indeed, using a BOM is discouraged (by both the Unicode standard and the IETF) precisely because it breaks backward compatibility with ASCII text processors. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems intent on adding an unnecessary (and, in the case of UTF-8, badly named) BOM to virtually every UTF-8 file created on their platform. This is done to make it easier for them to detect the encoding; however there are reliable, published heuristics which do the same job without the need for the BOM. That's what every other platform in existence does to detect UTF-8 streams. Microsoft's BOM use is purely to make their processing easier, even if it means that it breaks backward compatibility with older tools.

Thus, you are technically both correct. It's technically not a garbage character at the beginning of the stream, however it is unnecessary, and contrary to the way every other OS on the planet handles the situation.

(I've run into this more than once in my professional life, dealing with people who are supposed to be technically minded who use Windows Notepad to try to figure out what encoding a file is using. I've had them come back claiming my files weren't UTF-8 because Notepad claimed they were 'ANSI' (never mind that there is no character encoding standard called 'ANSI' in the first place). I've had to explain to more than one person that standard ASCII is valid UTF-8, even going so far as to providing them chapter and verse of the Unicode specs to prove that what Notepad says shouldn't be treated as gospel.)

Yaz

Unfortunately, you're conflating a few things that don't necessarily belong together.

Genetic modification to make plants herbicide resistant is only one form of genetic modification. And I can't disagree -- the way that Monsanto has gone after farmers, and pretty much "owns" agriculture is disgusting.

At the same time, there are a lot of other genetic modifications in food that have nothing to do with selling chemicals. You can't tell me that you're also against Golden Rice? They have a whole lot of studies which show that their rice is more healthy than the regular kind in areas that a) consume a lot of rice, and b) where there are various micronutrient deficiencies, such as Vitamin A (the deficiency of which can be a cause of blindness in children. More than 2 million people a year die from Vitamin A deficiency).

There is a lot of good that GMOs can do for this world, particularly in parts of the world with various dietary nutrient deficiencies. GMO doesn't necessarily imply "engineered to be herbicide resistant". As another poster said, your problem seems to be more with business practices and abuse of the legal system (and, I'd add, a political system hat allows these transgressions to occur) surrounding certain types of GMOs. But why lump in those that can actually help people in vulnerable populations lead healthy, productive lives?

Yaz

Not far up at all. Swift and Objective-C can easily call each other (Using Swift with Cocoa and Objective-C). This isn't particularly difficult, as in Objective-C you can use very easy reflection against classes to do fancy things like key-value coding, grab methods by name, etc.

Swift also has full C access support, with specialized types to map to standard C types. I'm not sure about C++, however it should be easy to add an Objective-C++ wrapper around it if there isn't some other way to do it (hopefully someone who has worked in Swift can jump in here -- I'm just looking at Swift right now, and haven't done any actual work in it yet).

Yaz

What rubbish. Plenty of cultures have parents who are involved in their children's education. My own parents were extremely involved, and as the only child, they put a lot of time and effort into my education and extracurricular activities. To this day, they are quite interested in my career, and are just as involved in teaching my own year old language and music.

That is not a statement on their children's capabilities. Tiger moms are common, and it just demonstrates responsible parents who are genuinely interested in their kids' well being.

My wife and I will certainly be taking an interest in our kids' education and lives, and that is not being overprotective -- that is good parenting.

Seriously? I want my delivery to go to where I tell the vendor to send it, period. I don't need deliveries interrupting me when I am working. Send it to my home.

Some of the greatest minds have been interested in seemingly trivial and popular problems (e.g., Richard Feynman).

This is about science and engineering, and whether or not a phenomena can occur, and it's about public's reaction to something that was proven scientifically.

Plus, a lot of Slashdot's readers are American, and some of us are geeks who like -- wait for this -- football!

Yeah, like those times when the Orange Order held their parades in Northern Ireland, celebrating victory in a battle over 300 years ago, where everyone had cake and ice cream went home with balloons.

No, wait, that's not right -- according to this for over 100 years people have been killed, seriously injured, homes and cars have been set ablaze, and bombs have been thrown around like footballs. In 1998, three brothers between the ages of 8 and 10 were murdered when their house burned to the ground from a thrown firebomb.

That was between two Christian groups and was over a parade.

Yaz

What, like The Troubles (aka The Northern Ireland Conflict)?

Let's see -- sectarian violence between two Christian groups (Catholics and Protestants) who were divided on purely religious grounds, that lasted for at least 30 years, with over 3500 confirmed dead and over 47 000 wounded. Where in one year alone, there were over 1300 bombings (including suitcase bombs and car bombs in populated areas).

And while it somewhat "officially" ended in 1998, there have been over 100 deaths since that time.

So let's tally it up somewhat -- Christians showing up with guns blazing? Check. Christians hiding bombs? Check. Looks like I have something!

Either you're 12 years old and don't remember how Christian-on-Christian sectarian violence in Northern Ireland was a near daily news item, you're being deliberately obtuse, or you're a complete moron. I'll leave you to decide which one.

Yaz

He doesn't seem overweight for me.

While I feel for the family, to say that he is not overweight shows just how much society's perception of being overweight has changed.

Take a look at this picture, for instance.

And take a look at the body fat visual chart for comparison.

With the overhanging belly, he is easily 35-40% at least. While the majority of people today are fat (especially in the US), that is not healthy. If anything, until recently, 20-25% used to be average.

Above 25-30% is the fat territory, and that's when you start increasing your risk for heart attacks, diabetes, and strokes. Mr. Goldberg may have had a lot of things going for him, but he is most certainly more than a little overweight.

Assuming he's ~6 feet, I would argue that he is probably ~30-40+ lbs overweight. That is not at all healthy. I'm not arguing everyone should have abs, but there's a happy medium here. Mr. Goldberg is very clearly on the unfortunate side of the medium.

Right. Because helping further the Victorian Era sexual repression that's ingrained in our culture is a good thing. Hint: it's not. No, we don't need to go overboard with it. That being said, not so long ago 14 year olds were getting married and having children. Get over your sexual repression and just grow the fuck up.

And part of growing up is learning to not let the comments, jokes, and snickers get you. Stop being an apologist for stupidity.