I've been using this wonderful device for controlling drip irrigation:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

The user interface is brain-dead simple. The dial simply has 17 settings, for
1: Daily for 2 minutes
2: Daily for 5 minutes
3: Daily for 10 minutes ...
7: Every other day for 5 minutes
8: Every other day for 10 minutes ...
12: Every third day for 10 minutes
13: Every third day for 15 minutes

That's it! There isn't an option for "2 minutes every 3 days" because -- guess what -- gardeners don't actually need that level of control! It just has a laser focus on a simple user interface that will be good for 99% of residential customers.

Would my life be better if I had to change the batteries in the irrigation controller every 5 days to power its wifi? Or if I had to run mains power and Ethernet cabling out into the garden for it? Would my life be better if I had a fiddly iPhone/Android app with more settings pages than I'd care to use, maybe a cloud-based controller like my Nest? Do I ever go on holiday and wish I'd changed the watering schedule before departing?

NO.

The author coated it at $160mil / mile

It might be really cheap and thin, e.g. Eiffel Tower with venetian blinds to block the wind when needed?

You're wrong! You can write Windows Store apps in C++ just fine. This C++ can use win32, posix, STL etc just fine. (however, all apps run in a sandbox, so some win32/posix functions aren't as powerful as normal, e.g. the sandbox doesn't let a Windows Store app enumerate files on the hard disk outside of the files it's allowed to touch).

You can also write Windows Phone apps in the same C++. So a mobile app developer could write their core in posix platform-neutral C++, and have it portable across Android+iOS+Windows. I know a few who do.

Of course posix doesn't have anything to do with windowing systems or touch, and win32 APIs (e.g. gdi32.dll, user32.dll) don't apply to windows store or phone apps since they don't have GDI or the traditional windowing system. So your C++ code will invoke new WinRT APIs to access the new functionalities. WinRT is perfectly compatible with posix/win32 APIs. Indeed, for some functionality (e.g. audio), you're REQUIRED to use win32 APIs because they're not exposed in WinRT.

Here's some example code that shows how you'd mix the new WinRT APIs to get hold of sandbox-specific stuff, and then interop with traditional posix APIs. It also shows how the asynchronous nature of WinRT APIs combine with the synchronous traditional posix APIs:

        auto f1 = Windows::ApplicationModel::Package::Current->InstalledLocation;
        create_task(f1->GetFolderAsync("Assets")).then([this](StorageFolder ^f2)
        {
                create_task(f2->GetFileAsync("Logo.scale-100.png")).then([this](StorageFile ^f3)
                {
                        auto path = f3->Path;
                        FILE *f = _wfopen(path->Data, L"r");
                        byte buf[100];
                        fread(buf, 1, 100, f);
                        fclose(f)
                });
        });

Sounds like you just logically disproved the existence of "self censorship". Or maybe you don't consider it to be a kind of censorship, despite its suggestive name...

Why does it say that google hasn't commented?

It has. It told the press about these cherry-picked examples. Straight from the PR textbook.

I think we saw it 20 years ago with VB and Delphi and similar RAD products. It democratized business computing, allowing every hotel to have a computerized checkin system tailored to its needs, every X business to have a Y system.

The scenario you posed it's interesting but you asked the wrong question. If a person says "searching for John Smith results in the following five search results and I'd like you to remove them" -- it doesn't matter which John Smith people were searching FOR... it only matters which John Smith they were GIVEN.

The question relating to your scenario is "how does google know that the page is about the requestor". Could be solved by making it a perjury to submit a false request, or requests go via notaries, or something like that.

Except the wayback machine ALREADY responds to requests to delete pages (via robots.txt), and when it gets one it deletes the entire history of that page as well.

Amazon didn't patent "arranging some lights and positioning a camera" in general.

They patented ONE SPECIFIC arrangement of lights and camera position. Presumably a particular arrangement that they spent a lot of time and effort to achieve, and wasn't obvious to them when they started, and one that they hadn't found documented or explained or taught elsewhere.

When you patent a machine, you're patenting "arranging some gears and positioning some cogs". When you patent a drug, you're patenting "arranging some atoms and positioning them right".

Claims 2 and 25 aren't that specific...

It's a kind of patent-drafter's game, mixing specific claims (like claim 1) and general claims (2, 25) and then making progressively narrower claims from the general ones (3 -- 24). They do this to cover their bases, to make it more likely to have the patent granted, and to help them have something they can fight in court.

"What exactly are they trying to patent?" -- it says so right there in the first claim, and it's stupid that you spent more time looking up prior art of what you *ASSUMED* the patent was about, rather than actually reading the patent.

They patented the combination of a white cyclorama background, with the object on an elevated platform, the combination of four rear light sources in a particular geometry behind the elevated platform, and some technical tricks to make the elevated platform be imperceptible.

I sincerely doubt that your promotional picture was taken on an elevated platform with four lights behind you and some looking down onto the platform. The website you linked was nothing like what the patent is doing either.

I'm not concerned at all. In an emergency I'll put it in neutral, and use brakes and steering wheel. I'll definitely NOT be messing around with ignition, be it key or button. Don't have enough hands.

If I understand, your question is basically, "why is the human brain's amygdala hard-wired to produce emotional responses in this way?"

There's no really good answer, other than "it just is" and maybe some handwaving about evolutionary psychology.

They did examine heartbleed.

http://ericlippert.com/2014/04...

Not much of a problem. I have a strong English accent, and the same technique works with Cortana as speaking abroad... I just speak LOUDLY AND CONDESCENDINGLY. :)