Which is what most direct marketers do. Images in marketing emails are not embedded, they're links to remote images ( tag FTW!). Most images have a hashed part of its URL that is your "unique" identifier in their logs.

What the cache will likely do is pre-emptively grab the images, triggering higher hit rates on the marketer's servers, leading them to believe more people are reading their emails, meaning more spam.

that's called issuing a paycheck.

All this discussion on this and no one has commented that TFA is from 2011??

This article isn't reliable information. It's from when SSDs were relatively new and definitely doesn't apply to the in-the-field results people are seeing in 2013.

He is required to register a trademark. Not a copyright.

But, if he relies on the at-large copyright, it's not as strong as if he actually registers through the Copyright Office.

Apple was visionary because they got USB to work as promised/designed.

Back then, it was about 50/50 whether you could hot-plug a USB device into a Windows machine and have it not crash. Famously demonstrated by Bill Gates at a trade show. There's video. Look it up.

The Mac was also the first computer to allow you to plug in the maximum number of USB devices (128) without crashing. It took Windows a while to get there too.

A timestamp and a few IP addresses can fix that.

Go get yourself a real computer.

It can also be integrated into unmanned drones, to have radar-invisible unmanned drones. Convenient for popping over a border real quick and taking a look around without alerting local air forces.

Sheesh.

This is what permissions are for.

Finally I can post without getting arrows in my chest!

As a marketer, and given the tiny little bit of info you've given, you can probably afford one person on staff, or an agency part time in your local city.

Just be aware, and this is the part that sucks, you need to make sure you have:

a) A clear idea of the consumer's problem you're trying to solve.

b) A great solution for that solves it.

Failure to have either one of those will lead to you chasing a bad product into irrelevance. And it's really expensive.

How do you make sure they're accountable, well, that'll be defined by what you and the marketing person agree is your metric for success. Is it sales? Target market penetration? Site Traffic? Word of Mouth/google trends? All of these goals will be treated differently through the eyes of the marketing person, and you need to make sure which one you want. There are strengths and weaknesses to all of them.

If you're concerned about bringing in non-performers, then do NOT enter in a "partnership" with them. Hire them outright. That way you can fire them if they don't meet the agreed upon metrics. Trust me, there are many, many charlatans out there who will gladly take your money and give you next to nothing in return. Conversely, one failed campaign is not an indicator of non-performance. It may take a few stabs to figure out what it takes to make people want to buy your product, but consistent underperformance is the sign of bad marketing. Or a bad product.

You cannot discount the idea that you may have a bad product. And nothing, and I mean nothing, will kill a bad product faster than great marketing. Once you get people's interest, you had better have a product that lives up to the marketing promise or word of mouth will sink you faster than the Titanic. Seriously, take a page out of Apple's marketing book: Underpromise, overdeliver. You don't have to overdeliver by much, but over deliver.

There's a lot more, but that should be enough to get you started.

And made Microsoft nice stack of money in the process.

Your comment is pointless. Letters and punctuation have almost no value. They are reproducible, infinitely, for free. But, you want me to derive argumentative points from your particular arrangement of them?

No I didn't, it's the last line.

First you get a beowulf cluster of turkeys.

Then you place a naked and petrified Natalie Portman above the turkeys, and you pour hot grits all over her, letting the grits fall on the turkeys, slow cooking them with their transferred heat.

If you find the turkey's aren't cooking fast enough, you add the sonic energy from screaming, "OMG ponies!" to the process, hopefully speeding it up an uncountable number of femtoseconds.

When Netcraft confirms that all other forms of turkey cooking are dying, you dispense the entire Beowulf cluster of turkeys into a series of (feeding) tubes.

Before eating, you praise technology by reading the latest F*cking Article on Slashdot, and ban any insensitive clods to the neighbors.

Then you eat the turkeys before they can move to Soviet Russia and eat you.

I use two writing devices these days.

Pilot Precise V5 http://www.pilotpen.us/ProductGroup/711-Precise-V5-V7.aspx

I discovered these in college, and have never looked back. I buy them in bulk, they last forever. Satisfies all your requirements except maybe #1, and that depends on finely you draw. Also inexpensive.

and the Pentel Twist Erase III http://www.pentel.com/store/twist-erase-iii-mechanical-pencil

I started using this in my High School drafting class, to the chagrin of my teacher at the time. He told me if my drawings went down in quality, he wouldn't let me use it any more.

It's been 20 years. I don't know what I'm going to do if either company quits making them.

If neither of these works, find a drafting supply store (or, I guess, an art store these days, or a Ben Franklin if you live on the East Coast), and go through the pen aisle. Unlike Staples/Office Depot, those stores will frequently have pens in bins instead of blister-packed. Take a pad of paper with you, and test some candidates. Find a representative group that might work, buy one of each, then use them at work. Find one you like, buy them by the dozen.