You know, and I know, exactly what sort of person decides to come to the GP's conclusion and make that sort of assertion.

Just like there is simply no way that you actually post your comments in good faith, right? Because everything that everyone does is always bad, always, right?

You know the saying. When everyone around you is an asshole, you're the asshole.

Of course the cops aren't going to complain when someone so stupid as to walk into their lobby right next to a picture of them and the warrant that's out for their arrest that's posted on the wall makes it easy for them. But the idea here is to simply shut down some scam transactions before they even occur. They don't have to DO anything - just make it clear that people who are uncomfortable with a transaction with stranger are welcome to meet up in the safest place available. Just like they tell you that you any time you think you might be being pulled over by someone who's not a real cop (say, an unmarked car), you can drive to the parking lot of a police station before pulling over. That's been the policy everywhere I've lived for decades.

Your eagerness to make a safe transaction or the serendipitous arrest of a stupid known, predatory criminal a bad thing is truly bizarre. Which of those two things is not in support of "the citizenry?" Which backwards world view are you holding that makes either of those things something nefarious on the part of the local police station? Grow up.

capital letters take more bandwidth

I take it you have never heard of proper secured accounts, reasonably obscure passwords, and well managed file system rights.

People who think the command-line shell is somehow a magical escape from all limitations are a blight.

Having bad teachers means paying taxes.

What WAS your point with that?

At the Europa day on the Hill last summer, I ran into a 90 yr old Harry Finger (the former head of NERVA) who remains absolutely convinced that this technology (which was ready for flight tests back in the Apollo period) is essential for human travel to the planets, and needs to be revived.

Looking at the delta-V requirements for a human Mars mission, I can't say I disagree with him.

No more imperial shit.

Oh, just wait until the NeoCons hear about this rocket.

It'll decrease their backhaul capacity, but few people even care and fewer still will do something about it. Heck, it took me three months to bother renting a VPS to do it and I already had all the skills.

A CA is going to give Verizon a cert such that they can mint a cert for any domai. and remain trusted in device root stores? Don't be a fool - it's completely different than a corporate device. Google Diginotar.

Actually, disabling substances are used in the vast majority of rapes. The most common is alcohol (trying to get the victim too drunk to resist or looking for someone who already is, in about two thirds of rapes), but drugs are used in about 20% of additional rapes. Very, very few rapes follow the classic Hollywood script of "stranger leaps out of the bushes with a knife" - so vanishingly few that the scenario is statistically almost nonexistant. Disabling substances are extremely popular because 1) they work very well, 2) the victim often can't remember the attacker well if at all, 3) the victim is not in a state to be making a report until long after the event, 4) the victim's ability to make legally reliable testimony is compromised. Why would people choose the Hollywood way over that?

And I'm sorry, but if you think that you can watch everything you consume every second of every evening you're out and not slip up, you're an idiot. And yes, the reason people get mad at people like you is that the problem is that there are people out there drugging other peoples' drinks en masse and thinking that this is acceptable behavior, not that victims haven't gained supernatural abilities to hyperfocus on everything they may potentially consume at all times and never slip up. "Look, I'm sorry that you're dying of pancreatic cancer, but you should have been getting pancreatic function tests daily and working two jobs to pay for weekly MRI scans to find it before it could have posed a threat to you, and because you weren't, it's your own damned fault, and don't act like I'm a jerk for pointing this out!" That's how you come across when you take that tack. The problem is the f***ing cancer, not the victim.

"disenchanted/upset customer"? Clearly, you haven't worked in tech support, or known anyone who has, or read any of the blogs or horror stories, or, really, informed yourself in any way about this. Humans have a bell curve of both "crazy" and "mean", and the tail end of either is not something you'd ever want to come into contact with.

Even if they had push apps, the value proposition isn't there any more.

There is no competition because the local governments in most of the areas Comcast services has given them a government-approved monopoly. The market has nothing to do with this because the government has deliberately eliminated market forces.

My sympathies are with the Comcast tech support on this one. As bad as Comcast can be, which is at least 300 milli-Hitlers bad, the tail-end of the worst people to call customer support can be worse still. Or just too stupid to be allowed to own a computer.

if you ever are the victim of a newsworthy accident/ crime, you will get cold called by a number of lawyers, who want to represent you pro bono

because such cases gild their CV, get their name out there. free advertising

They represent you pro bono because they think you have a good chance of winning, and standard lawyer's fee is 33% of any award or settlement. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. The dozen or so lawyers in the $200 billion tobacco company master settlement became instant billionaires.