This wouldn't be your ONLY source of authentication. But it could certainly be used as multifactor authentication (much like Google Authenticator is used today).

Except a printer will *not* ask for any documents or do a background check to see if you are allowed to own a gun.

Like other people already said before me, Hotmail NEVER accepted passwords longer than 16 characters. It would simply truncate it in silence. This is really a crap security policy and is notoriously known to be one of the worst security practices ever for password storage. Giving everyone awareness of the max password length, sounds to me like they REALLY want people to stop thinking of Hotmail is the place to be... I mean, think about it... technically, all this does is it makes Hotmail sound outdated and insecure. This might just be one more step they are taking towards forcing users to migrate to their new Outlook.com mail service.

Creating laws specific to the technology at hand seems like a complete nonsense to me. Today we use cookies in plain text headers of HTTP. Who knows what's going to be used as a standard in the future! If they use something else other than cookies, then it's OK to be tracked according to this law?

"and the user has a good understanding of what cookies are and how they are used" That just means anyone without some sort of official academic degree on (like computer science or any IT course) can legally claim in court he has no knowledge of what cookies are or how they are used. If you're not an expert on the technology used, you have no obligation to assess anything about how it works.

"Less eye candy" .... you see, for me that just means "Less GUI annoyances".

I like to have backups online -- I have them on a couple of services. Since they are just backups, I find it convenient to encrypt all files before uploading (gnupg style).

Sorry to hear about your situation, but you must be certain that death is an inevitable part of life. It is certainly sad that some people may go away earlier than expected, and we have this notion that a person may somewhat "live a while longer" as we keep their memories alive with us. After a loved one dies, mourning certainly is an important period to help us get over this fact. No matter how many pictures, videos or journals you make of a person while he/she is alive, nothing will replace the fact that this person is really gone. Fading memories are part of an essential process where we leave them behind and move on with our lives. We will certainly remember and honor our loved ones at their best and most marking moments. But holding on to so many specific details about their lives takes an incredible unnatural effort. The longer we try, the more difficult it becomes to remember specific details. And this is natural! The more we strongly hold on to a person after he/she is gone, the more difficult it will become to keep living. Please, don't understand me wrong. Unfortunately, that's how life goes on. It's hard, but inevitable. I hope you make the best or your time together. And my suggestion is "stop trying to record every detail of her life and spent more time with her as a family". Your own memories of this time together should be well enough to help you get over the hard period when she's gone. In the future, when you look back, anything else will just make you seem like "the guy behind the camera".

Some large coprs have already used .NET to create solutions and integreate with MS products. So... legacy's already settled.