It would be great as a starting point to be able to charge in currency other than USD, I suppose that should be easier to set-up than accepting non-US based merchants. There are a lot of non-US people like me that have a SSN and US bank account from past US experiences that can already use Stripe in their home countries. But marketing a product in Italy with a price in USD won't cut it!
All the examples of "bad" things that can happen reported here can already happen today because credit card companies already log all your transactions. The key point Jacques makes in his article is the the novelty will be in associating purchase history with web search history. It would interesting if somebody comes up with an example related to this new combination - I can't think of any top of my head. And while I don't blindly trust Google I surely trust them more than the financial companies that already have my purchase data.
Half cheek in tongue answer:
The difference is that in the US people believe that they will be making more and more every year while in Sweden you don't. So they think they will own tomorrow the money to pay back what they spend today.
Are they right? Well, from 1970 to 2010 US economy has grown at an average of 2,9% per year, while Sweden by 2,1% (1). This is a huge difference, almost 50% more. So yes, they are both right :)
(1) Figures are GDP growth at market prices, source: OECD
I would bet that most of that ie6 and ie7 share is business computers. It's the IT department that decides when to upgrade those browsers and not the users. In home computers ie might not be the dominant browser anymore!
I am Italian and I dislike Berlusconi. That said it must be recognized that all of Italy's issues were already there before him. We can't really say that Italy has worsened with him but we can surely say that it hasn't got any better. There were a lot of expectations in 1994 that he was going to change Italy and bring the liberal revolution it sorely needs. Alas, none of them were met.
This reminds me of wordings from Osho (I will paraphrase from memory here): when we go to see a movie we immedesimate in the story and we laugh, cry, feel happy or sad based on what we see. Then the screen go dark and we remember who we are and go back to our real life. Our mind is like a movie screen and we laugh, cry, feel happy or sad based on the thoughts we "see" and immedesimate in. If we could turn the mind off we could remember who we are and go back to our real life