I agree with your critique of the comment.

Cookies allow the website to trivially track user state. That's the real defense of cookies.

Granted, there are somewhat more onerous workarounds, but they are more nefarious. Would you rather have tracking done with cookies, which you can control-- or buried in GETs, hidden form fields, and obscured URL strings, which you can't?

Only one of those options is trivially controllable by the user-- and that's the only one this rules is messing with.

It's a stupid rule, clearly written with good intentions by people who don't understand WTF they're regulating.

The approach is completely backwards. They're hampering all uses of a given technology, when what they want to control is bad behavior. It's like banning/limiting hammers because a fair amount of people tend to buy hammers and then hit people over the head with them.

The legitimate hammer users get hampered. The head bashers buy mallets.

The correct solution to the absurd hammer example here is to make hitting people over the head illegal.

The correct approach to information collection abuse would be to make collecting information subject to regulation. As numerous people have already pointed out, you don't need cookies to track people and collect information-- the well-financed information industry can get around this dumb rule trivially.

Agreed. TiVo wouldn't pass the purity-or-death Richard Stallman no-compromises test, but let's face it-- the cable industry cheated TiVo by locking them out, using all sorts of non-competitive practices including subsidized PVRs, turning CableCard into a joke, etc.

TiVo is definitely doing something I don't love, but they are essentially fighting douchebaggery with douchebaggery.

Well wait no more. Merely pick up a copy of Win2k from 9 years ago. Or WinXP.

http://www.itsyourip.com/networking/how-to-add-multiple-ip-address-in-windows-2000xp2003/

In an ideal world, I would totally agree. The problem is that a lot of children have parents who do not give a flip about education and will not do diddly to motivate their children. The low-performing schools mentioned in this article are full of those kinds of kids.

What do you do then? Write these kids off because they lost the parent lottery? Mumble "ain't if awful" and cluck sadly when the cycle renews in a generation?

Keep in mind, these poorly raised children are going to be citizens one day-- and we're all going to be sharing a world with them. I wonder how the ones that make grades for pay all their life will adjust to meeting work goals for pay, versus the ones that flunk out or graduate with a 1.1 GPA?

I don't know for sure, but I'd be willing to wager. ;-)

I agree this idea is philosophically disappointing-- all children SHOULD cherish education, blah, blah blah. But they don't. But I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I totally understand your point, I just happen to be a fan of OpenDNS and wanted to correct the record. No offense intended. Interesting link-- I hadn't heard of ORSN. The fact that it has been allowed to die on the vine (so to speak) makes a bold statement about the need to pull control of the DNS hierarchy from the US.

Owned by that famous American, Rupert Murdoch.

I either misunderstand your point, or you greatly misunderstand OpenDNS.

I'm no expert on DNS infrastructure, but I do understand the basics. OpenDNS appears to be a "free (beer)" set of DNS servers, not an "alterate DNS hierarchy." OpenDNS conisders the same machine names authoritative for .com, .net, .org, etc., that everybody else does-- which is, of course, the infrastructure this article is talking about.

If that's not the case, please explain-- and I'll be sure to be using a different set of DNS servers tomorrow.

This is why "ironic" is a category, so I don't click on pointless drivel like this by mistake.