I have, on a couple occasions, used my smartphone to price-compare when in a retail store. Both times were at local, non-chain businesses. I like to visit a small shop when possible, because usually the owner or manager is present.

On both occasions, I very politely explained "Hi, I like this item and am hoping to buy it here. I was able to use my smartphone to compare prices. Some retailers will price-match Amazon (etc), who has this for $X. I can show you if you like. Would you be willing to match that price please?"

Now, here's the thing. I get that small businesses don't get the same wholesale pricing as Amazon. I'm not really demanding an Amazon price match. If they weren't willing to budge at all (especially if it's more than a 10% difference), it's possible I would walk. But, even if they met me halfway, I would still be happy to do business with them.

I think the idea of always paying the "asking price" is a very American cultural phenomenon. In Turkey, for example, it is literally expected that a customer will haggle for at least a 10% discount. It never hurts to ask, politely!

Sometimes when the government subpoenas an ISP for data on a specific customer, they request that this be done in a way that won't let the customer know. You can imagine the nature of criminal investigations that would call for this. The Google policy discussed here may very be for dealing with those types of cases. It's not logically correct to assume that this means Google is secretly sharing all e-mail data with a government.

Or, those 55 and older are willing to take the time to report an issue. Perhaps younger people are used to complex systems "not working" reliably, whereas older people are less tolerant of flakiness.

Ad networks should not enable their clients to include Javascript, Flash, Java, or other active content in the first place. If they have a compelling business case for doing so, all code should be "whitelist" filtered before being distributed. The ad network's reputation is on the line every time they serve an impression.

That's ok, from its perspective at 330 light years away, it's only 70 years since Kepler... if we just give it a few more centuries I am sure it will catch up with the new laws of orbital dynamics.

It sounds like anyone who enters the contest between now and the billionth purchase could win, not just whoever buys #1,000,000,000. Headline should be changed to reflect that.

Why does it have to be *functional* English? Most of the world is procedural English with some OO English here and there... I shouldn't have to learn a new programming paradigm just to communicate!

Would this attack style apply to any Firefox platform - Linux, Mac, Windows? As I understand it, FF plugins are mostly written in Javascript. Even on more secure platforms like Mac and Linux, each user has access to his own FF plugins directory, so if any malicious code were to be executed as him, it could presumably write this "plugin" into that user's FF settings directory.