Eldarrion's comments

> You are, however, completely right that it is stupid beyond ridicule that you technically can't store the fact that a user doesn't want cookies on the browser.

Yes you can, it's pretty simple to do. Add a timestamped entry into your database to not show that notification to the IP address the user comes from, then run a script every minute that clears out entries older than an hour. Granted, if you go back to the website an hour later, it would still pop up the request to access cookies but it certainly beats having it pop up on every page load.

Nobody said it's a 'lease to own' situation with the system. Never mind that it includes computing time and server-side calculations and database access so chances are it is a system that is simply being 'leased' to the police at the cost of 25% added value to all transactions made possible through it.

The privacy issue isn't about you being identified as someone who has an outstanding fine to pay. The privacy issue is that the readers are collecting and storing data about EVERY vehicle on the road. That data is then used not only by the police, but also by a third party private company that can do with it as they will. As the article clearly states it is entirely possible to extrapolate where a person goes to the dentist/doctor/work/sleep/etc from this data. And, to top it all off, the private company that receives the data reserves the right to keep the data for as long as it is 'commercially viable' to do so... i.e. as long as there's someone else out there willing to pay them for it.

I'd call that a pretty major issue.

That's like hoping people will not talk on the phone/watch TV or eat soup (using both hands) while driving.

I think the worst thing I saw ever was this woman who was having cereal while going 75+ MPH on the highway. She was holding the bowl in her left hand, she'd move her right hand off the wheel, reach down (assuming to the cup holder), grab a spoon, lift it, dip in the bowl, move to her mouth and then return the spoon back to its position before reaching up to grab the wheel again. The whole procedure takes somewhere north of 5 seconds to accomplish. Add to that the fact that she was going at least 20 over the limit and that at any point in time, her eyes are shifting to look into the bowl to see if she's scooped enough, down to the cup holder to check and make sure she's picked up/dropped the spoon properly and you're in trouble.

They want people paying more money to them. If Netflix paid $1M (This is just an example, I have no idea what actual costs are) to offer House MD to their US customers that's all fine and great, but the content owners want them to pay another $1M to offer the same show to Canada, then another $3M for India, etc, etc as opposed to them just handing it out for the same price for the whole world.

The other option would be asking for $20M to offer the content to the world which in turn would mean rising Netflix monthly fees. Either case it is the customer that suffers in the process.

While true, I have also noticed that a Netflix exclusive show (I think Making a Murderer) is going to soon become unavailable to watch on Netflix in US. Now, it could be an unrelated issue there... i.e. the show was banned or some-such, but I couldn't find anything like that mentioned anywhere. That sort of makes me confused as to how it is an exclusive to Netflix in the first place.

Why would you request, beg or plead when it is your personal car that is coming to you? Call maybe... but summon kind of rolls off the tongue better... never mind when you consider how gaming is developing and how you'd run into that particular word in pretty much any game that involves magic and 'calling' things to you.

This is the first time I hear of this discussion. That said, are we talking of applying a new law to a situation that has yet to pass sentencing? Then sure, a new law can be applied. If they have already passed sentencing then too little too late.

Completely agree with this point. It's completely ridiculous to retroactively apply laws.

It is incredibly wobbly considering it is not being used as an alternative to life imprisonment, but as an addition to sentence already being served or already finished.

The argument is that they already served their sentence. They are free to do as they will. This is effectively in addition to their sentence, retroactively changing the laws. Imagine if suddenly there was a law that said you were to have your tongue cut out if you lied, and that it applied to lies told in the past. How would you feel about that?

The point is, punishments can only be applied to sentences pronounced from this point on, not ones that have already been served or are in the process of being served.

According to the article they were. They are implementing a fix for European cars because European standards are a bit more lax than the US ones but they still were violating European standards as well.

That said why does it make a difference? If anything, any manufacturer should be doing their best to reduce emissions as much as possible for the sake of the whole world. Just look at the situation currently happening in China. Would you like for your country to be having the same issue, be it France, Germany or the US?

That only works if the issue can be resolved via ECU. The problem isn't just that the cars are reporting wrong data when being tested, but that the cars are producing more gasses than they are supposed to. If the update only fixes the software to report correctly, then the car will fail the emissions test. I rather doubt it's only a software fix that will solve the problem. Chances are there will need to be a hardware alteration to resolve the underlying issue. In that case, an update to the ECU wouldn't resolve the problem. You will need to bring your car to a dealer (Likely a VW-certified dealer) to have the solution applied as well as the software patch to make sure it is reporting correct data while undergoing emissions testing.

Not completely true. If you get fired, you have a month to find a different job. Of course, the issue is with finding a different job that is willing to jump through the hoops involved in letting immigration know that you are now working with them, but there are plenty. Problem is, of course, that knowing that you are dependent on them, some companies will give you worse conditions than a resident/citizen with the same skills would have, especially as far as the salary is concerned.

As Chris Rock put it some years back, the commercials are getting more and more ridiculous each year. To quote:

"So I was listening to this one where it goes... Do you go to bed in the evening and wake up in the morning? And I went Oh my god! I totally got that! I should go see a doctor!"

Really couldn't have said it better myself.

While I have no direct experience with the business side of Comcast business customer support, I noted that when we reported an issue yesterday at work, it took them over 6 hours to fix it at which point they might as well not have bothered. The operating hours were over.

- Don't care about blocked ports. I don't personally host anything, our company also has a separate hosting service. - I'm sorry, but... data caps? Is this a joke? In this day and age of services like Netflix and digital content distribution like Steam there's a place for data caps?

- $150/month is a ridiculous cost to put on a guaranteed 50/10 line. Don't care about the static IPs personally as I don't host anything. - Comcast, right.... you hit it on the nail there, it looks like. My experience with their customer service so far has been horrible. I'm usually empathetic when talking with technical support as I used to do the same job myself, but there's empathy and then there's people trying to intentionally annoy. So far I've felt like bashing my head against the wall after just three sentences from Comcast tech support. And they claim they spend millions on customer satisfaction? Please.

I was an UVerse customer too. I had only one issue with them for the two years I was their customer and I'm seriously considering going back. Better have a slower connection I can rely on than having a 'blazing fast' connection that craps out every 5 minutes.

Yeah, I'm definitely reconsidering ATT. I have coworkers that swear by Comcast and how great they are but my experience has been flaky at best. I work from home regularly, so I need my connection to be stable. I also do a fair bit of online gaming which also requires a stable connection.

It kind of tends to hurt not just me, but a fair bit of other people in the process when I, as a raid leader for our guild, cannot maintain a stable connection and get dropped several times over a 2-hour period. Never had those issues on my ATT connection and I've only had a single issue where a tree had fallen and severed a cable during 2 years of being their customer.

I wanted to start streaming our raids which was also the main reason to try the switch, but if it comes at the cost of being unable to take part in them, I might as well not bother.

Don't like ATT either, but at least their service seems to be much more stable. I haven't had to speak with an AT&T customer support rep in over a year. Comcast, I've been doing their trial service run for two weeks now and I've already had to deal with their customer support 6+ times, 2 of which were during the installation. I think I'll probably just end up canceling before my month is up and going back to ATT. At least I knew I could rely on my connection to not crap out at random.

You're a bit naive there. Business plans are not magical in any way. In fact, the past week we seem to be having a lot more issues with our business plan on Comcast than I am with my personal plan at home which seems to drop the connection roughly every other hour.

Still, Comcast shares their internet between customers in your area. If you're the only customer in your area, you can certainly get what you're paying for. If you're not, the best you can hope for is 1/4 of your promised connection speed during peak hours. It is something that Comcast has been doing for years, but it allows them to advertise higher speeds for lower prices than AT&T and people believe them because not everyone is familiar with the fine print.

Agreed. I recently decided to give Comcast another go because my current provider has some horribly bad upstream speeds, but even with brand new service, I seem to be having issues where my connection drops 4-5 times a day. It is not too big a deal when you're trying to work from home, but it can be a massive pain in the neck when you're trying to play anything online. I've been trying to resolve this issue with their customer support but I've gotten nowhere so far and feel like I'll probably just go ahead and cancel out of the contract before my first month is up.

They do advertise that they spend millions of dollars on improving their customer support, but I've yet to see anything happen on their end. Amusingly, our Comcast business contract at work has at least a couple of issues every week, too. We only don't notice them if they are to happen over the weekend, but when CRON jobs that require internet connection haven't run over the weekend, it's easy to figure out who needs blamed.