Back in the day, I remember a setting on iBrowse (Amiga) that caused the browser to ask before accepting each and every cookie. I don't see that setting on my current browsers, though I may just be overlooking it

Firefox has such setting, with the option to ask what to do for every cookie a website tries to set/update (which quiclky gets annoying), plus an option in to remember your choice for all subsequent cookies from that website. It's there in Preferences->Privacy->History->Use custom settings.

It has to have an X-windows server since we use that remotely from our Windows

Just to clear out a misconception that arises from time to time: you do not need an X server on a server exactly in the same way you don't need a web browser on your HTTP server. To understand that, you can think of an X server as a "browser" for the X protocol. On the server you just need some support libraries (which help applications in talking the X protocol).

its still better than the in-the-address-bar approach

Uhm, but now a malicious page can probably display a fake destination just by using CSS and Javascript (just make up a pop-up at the bottom left corner of the window).

Anyone else here miss the days when ios meant Cisco?

Not really, but reading "Apple" next to "IOS" still makes me rise an eyebrow.

I find it interesting that NASA showed no love for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I'd say that's because of the story bottom line: human intelligence as a gift from aliens refusing any further contact until men can fly into space. And men creating their human-like intelligences. Fascinating? A lot (I still watch it in awe from time to time). Realistic? The possibility of that actually happening are frankly remote, but not plateally impossible (so that's why 2001 doesn't make it in neither category).

It's difficult to manipulate binary digits in hexadecimal, too. I don't see any advantage to this.

One hex digit represents exactly 4 binary digits. One octal digit represents exactly 3 binary digits. A decimal digit represents... something between 3 and 4 binary digits. ;-)

Didn't Micro$oft have API's that they used and didn't want anyone else to use? Didn't they get lambasted for that?

Apple is not (yet?) a monopoly.

Since you cannot determine the state of an entangled particle, you cannot use it to "transmit" information until after you let the other end know, through conventional channels, what each possible state actually stands for

As far as I know (very little, please correct me if I'm wrong), you can't neither predict nor influence the outcome of measurements, but you can be sure they will be the same at both ends, unless someone is eavesdropping in the middle. The flow of measures can then be used as a one time pad to encrypt something at one end, transmit it over a conventional channel, and decrypt it at the other end.

So what kind of logic is that? If I point at your car and say "Give it to me" and you go "Ok" and hand me the keys then there'll be no theft

Poor analogy, indeed, since you can't create exact copies of someone's car for cents.

• run your own server in your home;
• keep your data on it (on encrypted storage) instead of keeping it in some remote datacenter;
• use a policy to carefully select who can access to it (i.e. your friends);
• in case of emergency, unplug it from the wall;
• encrypted backups go onto your friend's servers.

Basically, Freenet on a wall-plug computer.