I'm also curious about this, as I have received no notice. Some news reports mentioned *steep discounts*, but I can't find any information on this.

My primary concern is that I don't just have one account, I have about a dozen that are used in various ways. I don't want to have to pay for all of them, and merging (while possible) will be a PITA especially because of the size limits.

The problem is that all of these apps, and I have hundreds, expect that they can communicate with you over the account that you used in Google Play. So the updates, alerts, reminders, etc that can no longer be used seriously degrades our ability to use the apps which we paid for, through no fault of our own. This is just stupidity on Google's behalf.

This is betamax vs VHS. Bluray vs HDDVD.

What you mention is true, but how many people want to connect a high end video card to their computer over an external port? A few dozen?

One or two niche cases that aren't even a blip on the radar will not save thunderbolt. USB is ubiquitous, backwards compatibility guarantees a winner speed or not. How many devices do you use that use more than USB 2.0 bandwidth vs total USB devices that you have? The fact that it is also the charging standard means that they would really have to screw up to lose the crown.

So let me get this straight. If they ship me something that I did not order, I can either:

a) keep it at full price

or

b) say that I don't want it

In the second case, they will either eat the shipping cost both ways, offer me a discount, or just give it to me for free.

Why would I ever select option a? Yes, then they wouldn't ship me stuff ahead of me asking for it, but considering that I typically don't even know what I want until I go looking for it, I'm not sure how Amazon is going to do any better. Especially based on what I see recommended (maybe 1 of 10 items I *might* want)... seems like it's conceptually doomed.

I could see this being useful for businesses who need JIT delivery, but there's already a system for that.

We have those in my city. Some people hate it, but others love it. I use it to pace myself. If I am approaching a light and see five seconds left, I slow down way in advance of the light. Saves gas and my brakes.

So 6 cars have a 2% reduction? Does that mean that I need 300 cars to fully power my office building?

Why does the title say that 6 cars can power an office building? By that logic, my cellphone battery can power my house!

It's these exact problems that finally forced me to switch to chrome, and I haven't looked back. Having 2/3 of my plugins stop working every few weeks was boggling. The rapid-release schedule doesn't seem to accomplish anything, and then to force compatibility problems makes it seem like they WANT users to leave.

This depends - are you looking to learn the new coding methods to remain competitive in the workplace, or just for fun?

Honestly if you make a living doing this then you need to adapt. You need to get over your preconceptions and accept the changes to the way computing works. There are millions of programmers out there, if you want to stay employed you need to show that you're adaptable to the new technologies while applying all of the tried-and-true knowledge and experience from your past. It's hard enough to get a job when you're more than a decade out of school.

Trust me, I understand where you're coming from. I hate the inefficiencies of the languages these days. I dislike the general idea of doing anything other than a script in a scripted language. However my (perhaps anachronistic) viewpoints don't have many applicable places anymore. Unfortunately the tradeoff between RAD and proper coding often leans a little too far to the RAD side, necessitating the use of many types of languages and tools that you will undoubtedly not enjoy.

Not only will you be a lot more productive, but you'll be a lot more marketable if you just succumb to the "dark side" that is today's trend in programming languages.

Not to incite, but I too have been with Kiva for a while (5 years), have made about 200 loans and my default rate is 0.55%. Carefully choosing those that you donate to can lead you to have very low risk and great reward for the karma and sense of accomplishment far more than monetary interest ever could get you. Honestly I have no idea how anyone could have a 30% loss rate considering that the average default rate is 1.09%. Please do not besmirch a fantastic organization with inaccurate statistics.

Yeah, I'd like to introduce the OP to this little thing out here that we have called "the internet".

You see on "the internet" the VAST MAJORITY of websites that use flash would not (by any sane or right-minded person) be classified as "drop-dead gorgeous". In fact many of them are aberrations of nature.

Flash has become a way for ignorant web designers lead by even more ignorant managers to design glittery and flashy (no pun intended) websites that focus on dazzling the user instead of usable and content-filled designs. Poor Jakob Nielsen probably cries himself to sleep every night.

Yes there are a few solitary websites out there that do use flash productively and do things that genuinely can be justified as a valued-added usage of flash that could not have been provided in plain HTML, but those are far and few between.

So what this sensationalist article is really spouting is that there are yet no good development tools for HTML5. Wow Really? So a product that just came out (relatively speaking) doesn't have as good or as many design tools yet as a product that has been around for a 14 years. Good thing you pointed that out!

Once the HTML5 tools are available and it's as easy to develop "drop-dead gorgeous" (for better or worse) websites for HTML5 as it is for Flash I think that Adobe is going to have trouble justifying Flash's existence ESPECIALLY because some of those utilities are going to be open-source and free.