Most people have no idea what a "cookie" is, nor how or why they should manage them. Calling people lazy for not managing them is the epitome of engineering arrogance. Browsers need better, more clear, interfaces for managing cookies and websites need to provide easily parses info on what each cookie is for before people will even be able to manage them.

This is partially what the P3P standard was defined to help with, and the only browser that every seemed to do anything mildly meaningful with it was Internet Explorer. All IE did was refuse to set/keep cookies if either a P3P header wasn't provided or it didn't match the "user's preferences" (which the user never looked at or understood), so it just ended up causing headaches for web developers who at first tried to figure out which parts of the site's privacy policy matched the codes in the header value. When they found out that didn't work, they just copied the value of Google's P3P header. So many sites' privacy and data collection policies didn't match what they were asserting in the P3P headers, because otherwise, the site didn't work.

If you're using a car it's taken for granted that you learn how this thing works. If you're using it without learning how it works, it's your own fault, if you have an accident.

Why should this be any different with computers? The risk that you pose to others is pretty low, so there shouldn't be any requirement to have a "license". But I wouldn't call it arrogance, if I'll assume that someone using the network has a minimum knowledge about how things work.

> If you're using a car it's taken for granted that you learn how this thing works.

Only to a point. I own a car and am perfectly competent to use it, but I have only the vaguest of understanding as to what things like spark plugs and catalytic converters do. I know what a manifold is in mathematics, and I suppose it's a bit similar in a car engine. I deem myself knowledgeable to open the bonnet and add windshield wiper fluid when that's low, but anything more complicated I'll take to a mechanic.

> If you're using it without learning how it works, it's your own fault, if you have an accident.

It's my fault if I drive without, say, learning how to operate the brake pedal, or learning how to turn on the turn signal. But if the accident is due to something wrong with the internals that I know very little about? I don't think any reasonable person believes that getting licensed to drive should require one to have the knowledge of an automobile mechanic.

This isn't the equivalent of spark plugs. It's the equivalent knowing how the windows work. If you drive around with the windows down while yelling at the person in the passenger, seat, don't be surprised if other people can hear you. And you can't use as a defense that you didn't know that you needed to have the windows up.

It's precisely because grandmothers are "too lazy to fix their preferences" that governments step in.

I disagree. I have no problem with a cookie that sets a completely anonymous option, or which tells the server that I'm on a certain state, or that I've been here already so don't show me X, show my Y instead. I only dislike tracking cookies.

Browsers have no way of deciding which cookies are tracking and which aren't, and disabling them all causes all kinds of problems, including with sessions. Legislation, on the other hand, is less 'blind' and lets websites using cookies for functionality the user required and/or is informed of (like sessions, preferences and such) without letting websites perform unauthorized tracking.