There was a total of 46 inches of rain in just two days.

994mm rainfall in a 24-hour period in the most urbanised city in India -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharashtra_floods_of_2005

This is very true. In US, you can get sued by anyone on absolutely asinine grounds - and the courts are willing to grant huge damages which make no sense whatsoever. This pushes up the price of services such as healthcare.. makes manufacturing in the US a far less attractive option etc.

You make it seem like this was a carefully crafted strategy from Apple. But that is simply not the case.

It just so happened that Steve Jobs thought that everyone would be happy to play in his walled garden while he collected tax. However, with Android coming out with flash..and considering the speed at which android phones are selling, he figured that the best thing to do would be to eat his pride and his words and fix those features that are missing.

Apple was wrong to have placed all those restrictions on the iphone. This is the Apple way of acknowledging their mistake.

When we speak about the origins of the world, we are referring to the first step in the natural processes which led to the world and everything within it. The doctrine of first cause posits that this first natural step was set into motion by a *supernatural* initiator who is above and beyond all known natural laws. This supernatural being is referred to as God.

So by definition God is *super* natural and therefore does not require a natural cause to come to be.

I come from India and I am a christian. We are a minority - a mere 2.3% of the population. I know dozens of friends who though nurtured in non-christian families took the decision to become Christians.. despite severe persecution and despite having to lose everything.

[Citation needed]

Counter point - you are ignoring the thousands of hospitals across the world which are run by churches.

Also, you appear to be unaware of Mendel, Pasteur etc..

Despite all the efforts of the establishment to eat into the free speech rights on individuals in the US, US is still better than a LOT of places when it comes to freedom of speech.

Speaking as an Indian, I know for a fact that my life would be in grave danger if I started a blog documenting all the corruption going on in India (something I have been wanting to do and have been working on). I have been working on getting a friend of mine to host a site for me outside India so that the Indian government won't be able to take down the site as well, in case they turn against me.

Well, one may point out a few examples where people have been targeted for doing something similar in the US, but I can assure you that it is a LOT worse in places like India.

And in countries like China and Russia, it is actually even worse than in India. In Russia there is a very high likelihood that you will be killed if you speak too much against the establishment. In China, you will probably end up in jail for a long, long time.

So for those who live in the US, please be a little bit more thankful for what you have and instead of getting distracted with all the shiny gadgets and the stupid debates about right vs left, please do try and protect what is remaining of the rights that you have.

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/sri-lanka-buddhist-mobs-attack-churches

Would you apply these same standards to elections as well? or is that a special case where anonymity is more important and cowardice is acceptable?

According to the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God... Jews as a race didn't even exist. Even Abraham wasn't a jew then.

Your view is subjective. Flash crashes on YOUR computer. I use Windows, Mac OSX and Linux and I don't experience the problems that you are experiencing with flash.

Your linux distribution not coming with Flash isn't Flash's fault - it is the issue with those who put the distro together or due to licensing problems.. hardly a fault of the technology.

About open source support for flash - please do google for open source flash engines (hint - there are many) for application development, for charts and graphs, for games etc.

I think you are generalising too much. A LOT of websites targeting designers are very heavy on flash. Flash can be used for stuff other than garish animation and ads.

A lot of commenters seem to believe that ALL kids just want to be exactly like each other. I am sorry, but that is just not the case. A LOT of kids like to have things which no one else has.. also, I am guessing this girl is secretly proud of the fact that she can work a bit with Linux while the rest of the kids probably have a lot of trouble using windows with all the virus problems.

Yes.

I have yet to encounter problems with the Flash player not playing some content in flash - I have had on rare occasions had to reinstall the plugin due to some browser problem or because of a newer flash version, but I cannot say that the flash player keeps crashing on me. But perhaps it is just me.

Have you looked at HTML5 and SVG before? I have. Try rendering something complex with it and then try indexing the resulting code. There will be very little actual text worth indexing - most of it will be vector animation instructions. The same applies to stuff such as processing. Actually, the SVG animations are far more difficult to index than even RTF documents (which don't contain a lot of vector drawing instructions).

Example (from alistapart):

function drawSimpleCanvas() {
    var canvas =
        document.getElementById("simpleCanvas");
    if (canvas.getContext) {
        var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");

        ctx.beginPath(); // the circle
        ctx.fillStyle = "#ff0000";
        ctx.arc(50, 50, 30, 0, 2*Math.PI, true);
        ctx.closePath();
        ctx.fill();
        ctx.save(); // move and resize the octagon
        ctx.translate(100, 20);
        ctx.scale(1.65, 1.65);
        ctx.fillStyle = "#0000ff";
        ctx.beginPath();
        ctx.moveTo(36, 25); ctx.lineTo(25, 36);
        ctx.lineTo(11, 36); ctx.lineTo(0, 25);
        ctx.lineTo(0, 11); ctx.lineTo(11, 0);
        ctx.lineTo(25, 0); ctx.lineTo(36, 11);
        ctx.closePath();
        ctx.fill(); // restore graphics as they // were before move and resize
        ctx.restore();
        ctx.fillStyle = "#00ff00";
        ctx.globalAlpha = 0.5;
        ctx.beginPath();
        ctx.rect(60, 20, 60, 60);
        ctx.closePath();
        ctx.fill();
    }
}

You are better off providing supplementary text surrounding the animation which could be indexed by search engines.

This is pure B.S. If flash doesn't play well on a device, it is very unlikely that the same device will have enough muscle to play the equivalent HTML5 animation.

Oh ok. So having commercial support is a negative now? There are whole suites of products which support flash developers - if you are not aware of those products, please refrain from commenting on them. By the way, there are also opensource products for flash developers.

There are a number of excellet flash game engines. A quick google search would have showed you the same:
http://www.google.co.in/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=flash+game+engine