How? I don't know of a way to get the VIN through the ODB2 port, though such a capability wouldn't surprise me terribly with the newest cars. They could try to infer whether the data is consistent with the model of car that's being insured through some of the metrics such as fuel usage. Though the biggest problem would be the GPS showing the car being parked at a place you don't live at, and being driven to a workplace you don't work at.

That's absolutely correct. They banned sound trucks (a truck with loudspeakers that used to drive around and play political messages) a long time ago because they were obnoxious*. I don't see why the same reasoning couldn't be used to ban robocalling, except that the politicians won't do it.

*Technically they are still legal in most jurisdictions if you get a permit, but good luck with that.

Fuel prices go up: "We have no choice but to raise prices due to the price of fuel."
Fuel prices go down: "Shipping costs are 1% the cost of the finished good. You can't expect prices to go down."

Yeah, not buying it.

The idea is that people not using Verizon could do this, and pollute their databases with garbage data. It likely wouldn't affect their ability to track actual Verizon users, but it could make it more difficult to do so by burying them in garbage. Only problem is that I can think of a couple of easy technical solutions to easily filter out most of the "noise".

Don't forget that also includes counting two independents as Democrats. If you don't, then the Democrats never had a supermajority.

I'm kind of the same way, SimCity 3000 just added too much micromanaging. It's fine when you have a small town, but who wants to deal with stuff like individual water pumps wearing out in a large city when you have dozens of the things all built at different times. That's why real cities hire city managers to deal with that kind of stuff. I played the heck out of the first game (on the SNES) and SC2000, but just couldn't get into SC3000. I also played SC4 and it had a lot of problems similar to SC3000 but the mods helped keep it interesting for a bit longer. The mods also actually made my city look like a real city. I also tried the newest game, and it seems more like the Sims on a city (or small town) level than a Simcity game.

I've noticed the same thing. Something doesn't work right in the Windows 10 technical preview, and I look into it a bit more and discover it didn't work in Windows 8 either. Part of the reason why the transition to Windows 7 was relatively smooth is because all the kinks were worked out with Vista. But while these firms went to the trouble of working on Vista support despite the slow uptake (perhaps they were interested in 64 bit?), they seem to be completely ignoring Windows 8.

Or check some random dumpsters. Multi-core and 64 bit stuff is showing up now. The end of XP is kind of a boon, as a lot of the early Core 2 stuff only had an XP sticker on the case, and while they could be upgraded, a lot of places decided it wasn't worth it and out they went.

Vista's main problem was its Superfetch algorithm was way too aggressive, to the point where all the disk grinding slowed the computer down rather than speed things up. I had Vista x64 on a 16GB machine, and it would sit there and grind for a good while after booting up until it had filled every byte of it with some prefetched data, and wouldn't even take a break if I was trying to use the machine for something (Windows 7 is much better in this regard). I also had Vista on another machine with 1.25GB, and in many ways it ran better because there wasn't much ram leftover for Superfetch to work with so once it booted itself up it was pretty much done and ready to go.

A lot of them date back to Windows 3, possibly earlier. It was kind of amusing how some of that arcane knowledge came in handy again navigating around Windows 8, though to someone without 20 years of Windows experience I could see how it would simply be frustrating.

In the Taskbar properties, I noticed that I can turn the start screen back on, and when I tried it (and had to log out and log back in) I had the Windows 8 start screen with it's full Metro glory in Windows 10. This is on a desktop PC, so I'm not sure what's available on a tablet, but you can certainly make your Windows 10 box act just like Windows 8 if you choose to.

Actually, in many ways Server 2008 is closer related to Vista than it is to Windows 7. The more you know...

Actually, Microsoft does have a 10-year support cycle. Windows 7 will still receive updates until 2020. What just ended was mainstream support, which means that Windows 7 will not get any new features or enhancements, just security updates and bug fixes from here on out. Also, don't expect future versions of Microsoft products to support 7 either, this includes things like DirectX and IE which will probably make IE11 the next IE8 though Microsoft will continue to patch the last versions that run on Windows 7 until at least 2020.

3. The easy to hit shutdown button in the start menu that will shut the computer down with NO CONFIRMATION if you manage to accidentally push it.
4. The removal of the go up a directory button in Windows Explorer.
5. The idiotic full screen dialog that comes up when a program is preventing WIndows 7 from shutting down that prevents you from dealing with the issue, instead forcing you to cancel the shutdown to get back to your desktop where you can save your document or whatever so you can try again.

I doubt it. The virtual XP installation in XP mode doesn't get any more updates just like its cousins running on bare metal. XP mode was really supposed to be just a temporary stop-gap, and while I'm certain a lot of places that decided to use it are not ready to ditch it yet, I don't think Microsoft is going to accommodate them.