The Rails framework may be nice to develop on but deployment sucks compared to PHP.
They should stick with Zend Framework.
that he can't just hook up a loaner monitor to his computer while he sends in for a RMA replacement.
I get a similar effect by using a Dvorak keyboard layout at work (keycaps still in qwerty). Great fun when a coworker tries to enter a password on my keyboard.
Would adding a drop rule in iptables count as not honoring this 24h cleaning time that you speak of? Technically that would be a permanent record of someone that "opted out" of leaving any kind of record.
What would they be enforcing specifically?
First off, let me remind everyone that cookies left in your browser's cookie cache can only be read by the domain that gave them to you. So maps.google.com can read cookies issued by mail.google.com but www.amazon.com cannot read or in any way know about cookies issued from www.newegg.com. Cookies were designed that way for the exact reason of protecting privacy. Additionally, cookies that you receive on sites that you have not logged in to are not linked to your name, your street address, your email address or some secret serial number stamped on the back of your CPU; they are random numbers like you get at the DMV to know your place in line. Until you deliberately give a website some piece of identifying information by actually typing it in yourself, they know absolutely nothing about who you are.
Would "opting out" mean that anonymous users (ones that have not signed in to or otherwise given personal details to a website) can't receive session id cookies? That would mean that shopping at Newegg, Amazon, eBay and etc. would require a user to give actual personal details to the website before using any sort of shopping cart feature. Trying to work around that with any sort of ajax, HTTP/POST or HTTP/GET tricks would still be "tracking" per se and would be similarly banned.
Would "opting out" mean that the web server cannot log IP addresses? That would be a free pass for every damned script kiddie in every corner of the world to openly attack US web servers. If they have the "opt out" flag up then logging the IP to create firewall rules or report them to the authorities would be implicit admission of breaking the "opt out" rules. As a sysadmin it would also mean that I can't use Apache logs like this:
173.201.18.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:11:33:00 -0500] "GET
173.201.18.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:11:33:02 -0500] "POST
209.220.104.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:12:04:09 -0500] "GET
209.220.104.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:12:04:10 -0500] "POST /
10.209.187.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:14:23:54 -0500] "POST
184.154.62.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:14:23:54 -0500] "GET http
216.113.191.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:15:44:59 -0500] "POST
220.181.7.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:15:46:50 -0500] "GET
184.154.62.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:16:01:49 -0500] "GET http
187.87.203.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:16:12:25 -0500] "GET
187.87.203.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:16:12:42 -0500] "POST
119.63.198.xxx - - [01/Dec/2010:17:16:24 -0500] "HEAD
to figure out if things like 404 errors are coming from links on my site or some stale link on someone else's.
I could go on, but I'm not.
Getting our panties in a twist over "tracking" is idiotic. Most people like it when businesses remember them. I like it when a bartender knows that I like dark beers and recommends I try something based on that knowledge. I like it when I walk into a convenience store and the cashier has my brand of cigarettes on the counter before I'm even finished saying "hello". I like it when my bus driver knows to wait at the downtown station an extra 5 min because he knows that I'll be arriving there on another bus about the same time he's scheduled to depart.
How is tracking like this in real life, with your real face attached to your real body good while tracking your web browser is bad?
If anyone want's to legislate or ban anything, how about banning the sale of privileged information collected during signup? You could even leave off any language that would make it specific to the internet and have it protect your grocery store club card records from being sold off to the highest bidder the way that the Florida DMV just recently sold off the personal information of everyone with a FL driver's license.
A penny saved is a penny to squander. -- Ambrose Bierce