Does Comcast provide 2 Gbps internet? Note the words "up to" - they are very significant, and changes the meaning from "you will get 2 Gbps" to "you may or may not get 2 Gbps, but never more".
30 Mbps satisfies "up to 2 Gbps".

Speaking of blobcentric databases, whatever happened to Informix? It was supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread for documents, and would render file systems obsolete, if I remember their marketing correctly...

Does MariaDB (MySQL forked by the author of MySQL) now support ACID, raw devices and live guaranteed viable backups?
If so, that's welcome news.

PostgreSQL (pgsql) has been the main alternative for a while, but in my experience, despite automatic vacuumdb and similar, busy / complex databases still need to be dumped and restored periodically, or else they become terribly sluggish over time.
For 24/7/365, pg is not always the best alternative. It may be for 24/7/90, but in my experience, it is one of the databases that require the most scheduled downtime.

Absolutely. Pretty much anything that uses IIS, for example. Uninstall the app, and ISS continues running.
Or you could (at least in the old versions - I don't know what it's like these days) install Outlook without the standard Office apps, and it would give you an option to install Excel/Word/Powerpoint viewers. Uninstall Outlook, and the documents will still open in the viewer.

To me, it seems rather clear that functionality only turned on with the user's consent should not be turned off again without again getting the user's consent.

But that's the thing - the photo uploader is not app specific. It performs a different service.

This is like uninstalling the music player and then complain that the DLNA server is still running.

I should, perhaps, have said "public big city airports". You don't see many prototype aircraft at JFK.

As for home built planes, they have to be approved before flying them. Not after the fact. A big difference.

Given that the most popular car in TX is the F-150, there are 85 mph speed limit zones, and that car dealers offer to throw in the (not "a") gun rack for free, what do you think?

But anyhow, this isn't testing the car in Texas, it's testing it in one fairly well-regulated city, atypically designed to have as many broad streets, identical size city blocks and 90 degree corners as possible. It didn't evolve like most other cities, and present fewer challenges except for traffic density. Now Houston would have been a better challenge.

None. Because we should no more allow prototype cars on public roads than we should allow prototype planes on public airports. They have to be tested to far beyond the prototype stage before being admitted. If a company isn't confident enough that it can be let loose in real world situations, it isn't ready yet.

Wake me up when they test winter driving in upper New Hampshire.

I presume that those on a H1B visa will be let go first, of course?

A few decades ago, e-mail often took days, with nightly batch jobs pushing the mail another hop.
(I still have one system that delivers e-mail through UUCP)

Oh, the icon has changed quite a lot over the decades, but it's still recognizable.

Don't trust him.

I think a problem is the automatic assumption many young people make that the reason why an older person doesn't use something is because it's to complicated for someone older. I claim that this is largely false, and that the reason why older people don't use the technologies is because they suck, are intrusive, unreliable and fleeting.
Young people are less critical, and seldom think long term (and when they do, they think a year is long term).

Why should an old person learn to use (in rapid succession) CompuServe, AOL, Yahoo, LiveJournal, Myspace, Facebook, Flicker, Pinterest, Instagram (and so on and so on), instead of his relatives putting a little effort into hand written letters and face time?

Better than a Waterstein, I suppose.