The only companies left standing after 20 years are those that use acquisitions to make up for the fact that successful innovation involves a lot of luck. Google, Microsoft, and Apple all use strategic acquisitions to enhance themselves. Do you think Google created Android, YouTube, and Google Maps/Earth? Do you think Microsoft created MS-DOS, Powerpoint, and Skype? Do you think Apple created iOS, OSX, and Final Cut Pro? All of those are final products that evolved from acquisitions. They are not home grown, yet they define massive parts of their corporate identities.

Number one sports website, number one fantasy sports website, well regarded finance site, Flickr and Tumblr are still going strong, Yahoo Mail is still near the top in active userbase, smart investments in foreign social/search companies, etc. They do pretty well for themselves, which is why they're still around

Brain drain wasn't about engineers, it was about culture. They want the Silicon Valley culture of being in-office tied-to-desk slaves. They got it.

Now, almost a year later, the project is back on track. Ptacek, a cryptography expert and founder of Matasano Security, will no longer lead the cryptanalysis and the effort will no longer be crowdsourced. Instead, phase two of the audit will be handled by Cryptography Services, a team of consultants from iSEC Partners, Matasano, Intrepidus Group, and NCC Group.

Are these auditors trustworthy? At least if it's crowdsourced it's an open process.

I enter the pin when I use it? Or I initialize the card with a pin when I get it and that creates some type of cipher key for encrypted transactions?

...like me

Rates are more or less unregulated. An individual under LA DWP pays less than an individual under SCE. SDGE has the highest rates in the nation. If I lived across the street in the next city, my rates would be much less(SCE rates rather than SDGE rates).

This isn't going to stop local cable monopolies, either. I have access to one gas utility, one electric utility, and one water utility. Where is my competition? The only place I actually have choices is internet/tv: cable or fiber or DSL(where I have dozens of options from DSL resellers).

My private school had 15 people per class, and 200 people at the most in the school. My public Jr High had 25+ people per class and over a thousand students, 3000+ students at the high school level. When you go to class with the same kids for 6 years, your social experience is much less. The private jr high and high schools that I would have attended would have been small as well. Apparently you had a tough time in public school, I didn't, but, more to the point, you found out about the real world in high school. You go to college to live that naive and you're in a worse spot than if you did it in high school. Learning how to protect yourself(both mentally and physically) is important.

For what it's worth, my marriage was the same situation as yours(and my now ex-wife was just like yours). Not seeing eye to eye on simple things like this caused too many fights. I want my child to have up to date vaccines and be in public school, and I need my wife to have a decent job because of her lifestyle demands, etc.

After a long debate, we made the choice to move into a good school district and send our kid to school. This was a long fight, as she had family in rural Oregon who homeschool all of their kids, and based on the stories of the kids(dumb as bricks, pregnant by 16, etc), I did not want to send my kid down the same road. She also had separation anxiety(it was bad enough that she did not spend a day apart from him until he was 10[sleepovers] or travel without him until he was 13).

I went to private school for elementary and public school for the rest, and I was very satisfied with my experience, and I've made friends I otherwise would not have made. My time in private school prepared me academically and I was able to do extremely well in public school(entered a year ahead in some subjects), which was beneficial because doing well in public school in California gets you a great deal in state aid to state schools as well as guaranteed enrollment in state schools.

I don't think there is a replacement for the social education school brings(and public school was much more educational in that regard than private school), but I don't think that that is the only reason why. I also think that school provides the opportunities to advance just as much as if you were a real teacher homeschooling your kids.

This isn't the first time that IBM has done mass layoffs and it won't be the last. This is to be expected, to be surprised by it is to not learn from IBM's own history(Sure you can keep your job, but we need you to move to Southeast Asia and we're going to pay you Southeast Asian wages. Oh, you don't want that? Here's your severance package.).

FIOS is rolled out to plenty of whole cities in LA and OC. Lakewood, for instance, is a giant sprawling 50s era suburb... FIOS top to bottom.

AT&T only brings fiber to the door in new construction for the most part, though. UVerse sucks anyways.

Blackberry is all but dead in the corporate space. This leaves a hole that iPhone and Android are filling. Microsoft recognizes that Windows Phone isn't going to fill that gap, so they're finally moving their branding into those environments because of that. I'll assume that advanced features are/will be available that make it worthwhile to deploy the application in a corporate environment over the stock applications. The attachment integration with web based services already gives it a leg up on iPhone's Mail application. Not that I'm expecting it based on what's announced, I'd be very happy if there was a way to give it network folder integration within the network where Exchange is located.

I find the built in iPhone app lacking.. I'm willing to try any app that has Exchange support to see if it's better.

Verizon FIOS