I personally implemented a Flash tracking cookie for an e-commerce site I developed back in 2002. The only thing it did was store a GUID. I was using it to track user metrics and remember shopping cart contents. I did it because back then cookie paranoia was much more widespread and people more routinely blocked them. These days, most web users don't seem to care. Perhaps because so many sites nowadays require cookies for basic functionality.

Detroit? Yeah right, you need to have money to attract money.

I was previously part of a tech start-up that grew out of research at the University of Michigan. The founder tried like hell to get funding but no one would listen to someone based in the Midwest. And no VC in this state understood the industry well enough to risk the amount of capital we needed. Eventually he got the VC needed from a couple of places in the Valley, conditional that the corporate HQ be based there (so they could keep an eye on their money and handpick the leadership). So we had most of the engineering going on in Michigan while the sales/marketing/leadership rubbed elbows in Cali. It was a very inefficient system. But you had the engineers who refused to relocate to CA and the bigwigs who refused to move to the Midwest.

There was always this odd tension between the two offices. The Cali guys treated us like we were some backwater boys who didn't know how to run with the big dogs. We viewed them as pretentious mercenaries. Anyhow... I'm rambling. Point is that while I really dislike the Valley culture, I don't think that Midwest is ready to compete with it.

I've called 911 several times from my mobile. It acts like normal call.

Newegg is the only store I've seen Verified by Visa used (and I buy a lot of stuff online). Having had my share of problems with it, I never even browse Newegg anymore. I guess they must have such a high incidence of fraud though that it's worth losing the occasional regular customer like me.

I don't understand how your reply adds to the conversation? The GP did not state that the parents shouldn't have the choice. He is, in fact, simply ridiculing them.

Yeah but the average Chinese is poorer than the average American. 1000 yuan is like the US government giving a citizen about $1100 for turning someone in.

Out of curiosity, how's the quality of the landlines in India? In the US, practically every household has access to a landline, regardless of how far out in the backwoods they live or how poor they are. US telecoms networks have built/maintained a physical network (with five nines of up-time!) across a huge geographic span for about 100 years.

I'm not saying that telcoms haven't squandered their profits to some extent. And it makes me sick to think about how they've abused their subsidies on the backs of the taxpayers. But anyone who's ever had to modernize a corporate LAN/WAN, or refactor an app written in a dead language knows how much, much easier it is to move quicker and cheaper if you don't already have a legacy platform to worry about. I can't imagine how much inertia a hundred year-old system has.

Nitpick: But welding is most definitely a skilled trade.

The US Navy released an RFI for a feasibility study of creating a virtual wargames platform. The intention is that some contractor will build an Internet-based RTS game to train people on piracy fighting strategies. Anyhow... in the RFI they mention a major reason that shippers don't hire security for each of their ships is that it puts them at an economic disadvantage.

Ocean freight companies are *really* hurting financially since the US isn't buying many widgets from China these days. If they hired a small security detail for each ship, they'd have to charge their customers more per shipment. However, the customer would just switch to a cheaper carrier. So it's better business sense for them to risk the occasional pirate attack (which is a very minor portion of the overall shipping traffic).

It's not all that interesting, IMHO. If you read the description, all network I/O is done using HTTPS. The comparison to Amazon's S3 is fair, but it's ridiculous to compare this to NetApp or any of the other SANs they have listed; no iSCSI, no fiber channel.

Props for making me fondly recall the olden days. I still remember the init string we used to give to customers when I worked tech support at an ISP in the mid 90's: AT&F1&C1&D2S7=60. About the only thing it's good for anymore is an awesome password.

Just as art is hollow when the artist cares only about money...

While romantic-sounding, what does that really mean? The world is filled with art (much of it famous) that was created by really talented artists trying to put food on the table. In fact, I can't think of a better motivator to produce good-quality art than the prospect of becoming another "starving artist." Michelangelo absolutely hated painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He was a sculptor and only did the frescos after being hounded into by the Pope. He complained incessantly about not having as much creative control as he wished over the project, about his aches and pains of doing uncomfortable work, the papacy rushing him, etc.