Trapick

That's idiotic. If spam links counted for 0 (when caught) there would be no disincentive for everyone to use them. The appropriate way is for them to count negative but have some way of legitimate sites disavowing them at some kind of time or effort cost (oh wait, that's what the system currently is).

If you have a better system let's hear it.

Short answer: yes, but it'll cost you, figure out a better way.

First thing to know is, if you're talking to banks you're sort of talking to the wrong people. You need to be talking to Banking Host providers, or Core Banking System providers (they go by a few names). These are the companies that actually provide the back-end for the banks. So if you're talking to bankers, they won't have any clue because that's not something they do.

Second, read up on ISO 8583 - that's a common API that's used. You may need to implement it, although there are a few open versions around.

Third, it's going to cost you lots of time and money. If you're solo or small, figure out someone who has already done the hard work and pay them for this.

Probably to make it hard to convert to cash or easily sold goods. That way they can give them out for customer service reasons / free giveaways, etc. without worrying about them being traded in for phones and sold at cash value (or near to it).

If ladders were commonly advertised by their width (as TVs are by the diagonal)? Yes, absolutely.

I put funny first for a reason - I think that's the primary reason for her popularity.

Please provide a source for that number, it sounds beyond ridiculous. The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/11/080211fa_fact_...) states 33 million are sold in the US each year - so the idea that thirty times that many are tossed isn't really reasonable.

There's no paradox: people don't care all that much about production values.

People watch Jenna Marbles because she's funny and attractive. Whether or not she frames her shots well is much less important.

Some places it is - I have friends from France who would consider "where do you work" and "what do you do" about as rude as directly asking how much money you make, and not to be done except among close friends.

Sure, if it's well-written and comes with some consideration (as in, you get some cash money for agreeing to the NDA).

"Health care in the US is idiotic" doesn't really warrant a headline anymore, everybody gets it.

So?

First, storage doesn't cost google all that much - on the app engine they charge $0.24/GB/month, so their own cost for gmail is likely a lot lower than that. And it's hardly 10GB per person - I'm a heavy user with lots of email, never delete anything, etc. and I have 0.8GB in my gmail this very minute (compressed or not? I'm not sure). So for their average user, probably less than half a gig. So maybe $0.10 a month for the storage. There are other costs, to be sure, but there's a ballpark.

So a couple ad clicks a month would probably do it - and you forget the biggest thing - gmail means you're that much closer to google. They have more info about you, you'll search through them more, you're more likely to get an android phone, etc. etc.

Gmail isn't going away.

No thanks, I like my 35 hour work week just fine. Maybe you suckers should try Canada?