Unfortunately, it has become such common practice to request "kitchen sink" permissions that it's nigh impossible to find useful apps that don't do so. And the sad fact is that users have become so jaded to it that the money that app makers lose from people who value privacy is less than the money they make from people just clicking through on ever "OK" button they see to get their new shiny.

I wish I had an answer to this problem, but I don't. People are stupid, and there's not much you can do to fix that. Unfortunately, that means that people like you and I who do care about our privacy pay the price.

Maybe, but it was one particularly conservative Supreme Court overturning a couple of centuries of precedent. And even in doing so, that <sarcasm>bastion of liberal activism</sarcasm> Antonin Scalia had this to say in his majority opinion of the case you're using for reference (Heller v. DC):

I wish I had mod points to give the parent poster. I'm so sick of the "it won't do any good" cynicism posts like those above. You know what REALLY won't do any good? Sitting on your ass doing nothing except crying "woe is us" on Slashdot.

Do you know how we got to the point where a lot of elected officials don't care what people think? People sitting around grousing about how elected officials don't care what they think. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you're going to simply tune out of everything going on and not care or hold people to any standards, then really, why should anyone care what you think? I know if I were an elected politician, I wouldn't give a damn what people think who don't bother to let me know, or even vote. Why would I even waste my time?

I vote in every election and primary I can. I do write to my Congresscritters. I tell my friends what I think about stuff going on and the people who are in and running for office. And yeah, sometimes it doesn't do any good, especially being a liberal in the Bible Belt South. But you know what? At least I'm trying. At least I'm not just whining about problems. And sometimes, people actually do make a difference, especially at a local level. You don't have to save the world, you just have to care. If you don't, then it sucks to be you, but stop trying to piss on the parade of those who do.

By the way, for those of you in the "it doesn't make a difference" crowd, by all means, keep sitting on your asses. Your apathy gives people like me disproportionate say over things going on, so you know, thank you very much for that.

Fair enough; if you're so hung up on this issue that Cortana won't let you treat her in some kind of perverse way, then you are under no obligation whatsoever to use her as a virtual assistant.

But don't then sit around wondering why people like me judge you as being of poor character. And before you reply, "I don't care what you think of my character," again, such is your prerogative. But then, you probably also have no idea if I'm your boss (or future potential boss), your loan officer, the person evaluating your college application, your potential friend, a possible future customer of your services, etc. If you're willing to live with the consequences of doing so, then by all means, please feel free to use as slutty a virtual assistant as your tastes desire.

All other things being equal, I'd give raises and promotions to the people who demonstrate that they have a continuing interest in learning more and keeping abreast about subjects relevant to their field than someone who thinks that once they get their degree, they never have to learn anything else. So if you think that "quantifying the time spent in the classroom during professional development and training activities" = "worthless as shit", then hey, it's your résumé, good luck with that.

(Of course, that's just the practical monetary consideration of the matter. Some of us actually like doing these classes just to see what's new and to *gasp!* expand our horizons.)

*sigh...* Why do I bother feeding the trolls? Oh well, here goes, mostly for the benefit of everyone else who might have accidentally read your incredibly racist, stupid post.

So, apparently, is yours for not knowing that racism is responsible for differences in things like average IQ and earning potential of African-Americans. African-Americans are just as capable of learning and performing as "whites" when put into an environment conducive to learning and free of the systemic racism that has plagued this country since its inception. If it weren't for people like you, there wouldn't be such differences.

And the likely reason most "Africans" don't want to live around their own kind is because the people you're calling "Africans" aren't, in fact, African. They were born here, grew up here, lived all of their lives here, have all of their friends and families here, and are integral to the culture that defines us as a society. They're not "African" any more than you're "European" because of your likely heritage, and making such idiotic statements is like claiming that you don't want to live around your own kind, in EUROPE.

And, of course, that completely neglects the fact that most people of African heritage in the United States aren't here because their ancestors came here voluntarily, they were shackled and forced to relocate against their will, likely by those who were your ancestors. And, of course, that unless you're a full-blooded Native American, you're just as much an "invader" here as those you look down upon--except even worse, because your ancestors came here willingly and by force.

So please, stop being such a tool, and the cause of the very problems that you're bemoaning.

Sounds to me like someone just didn't want to go through the administrative hassle of gathering the information, copying it, and handing it over. Obviously, that shouldn't be allowed unless the DOA can provide some evidence that it will compromise the privacy of an actual person.

As a former avid City of Heroes player, I wish that someone would do this for shuttered MMORPGs. There are so many, and unlike single-player games that will at least run on old hardware and/or OSes, shuttered MMORPGs are completely inaccessible by any means. (Well, other than server emulators, for the very, VERY few that are lucky enough to have them.)

A while back, I wrote an email to GoG basically telling them that I wish they'd consider approaching some of the publishers of shuttered MMORPGs and offering to host them, either buying the rights to the games outright or licensing them, and charging $10 or $15 per month for access to everything (or offer cheaper plans for limited access to one or some games). Because the playerbase of many of these games would be a lot smaller than the new flashy hotness MMORPGs, it probably wouldn't take that much in the way of hardware, and if they could negotiate access to the source code, they might even be able to rewrite parts of the game to run more efficiently or even release updates. I got back a response that boiled down to, "Thanks, but we're not going to do that."

I still think it's a market that's ripe, and someone at some point will exploit that and make a killing off of it.

Hmm... Anyone got some negotiating skills that could pair with my technical skills to get this done?

Well, except that:

• Not 100% of a product's or service's cost is human resources, and even the cost that is HR isn't 100% salary.
• Prices tend to be somewhat sticky. Sure, you could pass on some of the labor costs directly to customers, but your competitor will take a lower profit margin to increase volume by stealing your customers. (Which, funny enough, is how Gravity got into business to start with.)
• Even if you pass that cost on, it will likely only be after months or even a year or more, meaning that in the interim, the lag directly benefits those at the bottom,
• I don't see anywhere that the company's skilled labor was making the company's minimum wage. I'd be surprised if they aren't making considerably more.
• If the only reason you got a degree was to make more money, then you probably deserve whatever hardship you have coming to you. Personally, I got a degree so that I could get a job doing something I wanted to do, not because what I majored in commanded the highest salary.
• And congratulations, now you know how millions of people feel who got degrees or otherwise invested in vocational training or certifications in stuff that was hot at the time, but has since cooled down. I know a lot of IT people today who are living on beans because what all of the experts thought would be an unending fountain of money quickly turned into an offshoring nightmare, stranding hundreds of thousands of IT professionals in unemployment lines.
• If you read a bit about Dan and Gravity, you'll find out that he's paying for the raises out of his own salary, which he cut from around $1 million per year to the minimum $70k per year minimum. He has promised not to pass ANY costs for the raises he's giving out to customers. That's a guy who values his company more than yachts, private airplanes, and other trappings of wealth.

In short, the argument you're making is the same one that has been made since a minimum wage was created, that it doesn't do any good because prices just go up to account for it. But every time the minimum wage is raised, prices have never gone up an equal amount. (Likewise, not raising the minimum wage has never caused prices to not go up.) So what you're saying is a gross oversimplification of the reality of the situation that causes your final conclusion to be wrong.

Wow, Ahmed called you a filthy infidel? Sorry, I wasn't aware that you knew him personally and he had such animosity towards you personally.

Thank you for your recipe for how to ensure that systemic prejudices remain in place, that the world never changes for the better.

To be blunt, this is the same attitude a bunch of white people had in the 1950s and 1960s when they said, "If you're black, you don't vote. You don't sit in the front of the bus. You don't eat at lunch counters. It shouldn't matter yada yada yada, but it does."

Is Ahmed some sort of boy genius? Eh, I doubt it, but the simple fact is that NO ONE, Muslim or otherwise, should have to just sit back and tolerate endemic racism. And if it were my kid that you were telling that that's just "the world we live in," well, you and I would have a problem. Maybe you were a liberal, but if you think that this is okay, that it's Ahmed who should have to change, then it is most emphatically not the left that's moving away from you.

Okay, fine. I think we should redistribute wealth from the top to the bottom. There, I said it. I honestly wasn't aware that my comment made it unclear that I support that idea.

But I say it with two qualifications:

1) More importantly, I think we should redistribute income from the top to the bottom, and

2) I'm not proposing that we redistribute wealth equally or anything like that, a common strawman. I simply think that the system that has been rigged for at least the past three decades should be rebalanced so that, for example, CEOs are making a few dozen to a hundred times the salary of average non-management workers at a company instead of thousands of times the salary. I think that companies should be penalized for moving jobs out-of-country. I DEFINITELY think that the minimum wage needs to be raised and pegged to the cost of living so that we don't have to address the issue every few years. I think that the capital gains tax rate should be pegged to the top marginal income tax rate so that no one ever has to pay a higher tax rate because they make their money by working instead of making money from having money.

In short, I think that the harder and smarter you work, the more you should enjoy the fruits of your labor and productivity. But I think that you should reach a point of diminishing returns so that as you prosper, you're directly helping to provide others the opportunity and environment in which they can prosper also.

I've always said that I'm not jealous of those who are wealthy. If my company's CEO is making a billion dollars a year, more power to him or her. But then if they start laying off people, moving jobs overseas, freezing raises, cutting benefits, undermining worker's rights, lobbying congress to pass anti-worker legislation, etc. so that they can make just a little bit more, then we're going to have a problem.

This is oversimplified to the point of being incorrect. Your flaw is thinking that $1 corresponds to some unit of effort. In reality, $1 corresponds to some unit of productivity, whether it's you, a robot, some technological innovation, a new business process, or whatever.

Currently when companies realize gains in productivity, all of the additional money either gets paid out to the people at the top or reinvested in the company, which essentially pays it out to the investors. The employees get little or none of it, which is why the past three decades productivity has been skyrocketing and we've experienced an average of around 3.5% growth per year, but real wages have been stagnant.

One of the premises of a UBI is to ensure that some of that 3.5% growth ends up in the hands of the people who are working longer, harder hours, taking on multiple jobs to make ends meet, and actually creating the productivity gains that companies are benefiting from but not passing down.

I can't. Gogo has been granted an exclusive Air-To-Ground (ATG) 3Ghz broadband frequency license by the FCC.

No, actually, I can't. It's not satellites that are the problem. Gogo has been granted an exclusive Air-To-Ground (ATG) 3Ghz broadband frequency license by the FCC.