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?

Yep, the unstructured garage situation is a much better example than the poorly marked highway with missing markings or potential conduction areas. The sudden lack of GPS and maps is highly contrived anyway (!), and these conditions can be coped with fairly easily by analyzing traffic if other cars are around, staying on the right half of unmarked roads (dynamically calculating virtual lanes, something the software does anyway), recognizing obstacles and objects in motion around construction sites. These are all highly predictable situation that engineers can more or less easily integrate into their models, so to raise them as top level concerns seems very naive, especially for a supposed expert in the field.

I've been thinking about that problem too. A good example would be unstructured situations, such as spill over event parking on lawns or gravel lots. Given existing cars cars already there certain pattern formation algorithms can be applied, such as continue this or that line of cars. Otherwise things get even trickier and some spacial user interface will have to let the passenger point out in an overhead view where exactly to place the car and in what orientation. None of these are unsolvable problems per se, but a lot of research is still ahead for sensible user interface and car interaction paradigms that can be elevated to standardized levels across makes so one can hop from one car to another and still operate it reliably. Perhaps even in completely autonomous vehicles such as the ones Google is experimenting with a fallback controller of some sort will always be needed.

Interesting times, for sure, and I'm glad I'm getting to live through them.

Yes, but the model up until now has mostly been either free (OTA) or paying for an entire service (cable, minus the odd premium channels). This is streaming, which inherently limits the available quality to whatever CBS feels like providing and whatever your available bandwidth can handle; with ATSC OTA there's little reason to made content look worse on purpose, though cable/satellite is a mixed bag (cue up the stories of Comcast squeezing more and more channels into smaller space).

The money they make off of television advertising (OTA/cable) is pretty big, IIRC. Also, FWIW, CBS made a profit of $1.4 billion last year... hardly sounds like they're hurting. I guess what I'm getting at is... they appear to be forcing people into a specific service using a name brand they know will get at least some people to bite. You have a loyal fanbase, why potentially ruin that by forcing them on to your platform? To make it so you have to pay for it AND can't skip ads?

Whoops, my bad, no idea where I got $15 from. :( Still, other than being able to watch whenever I want, I can see this turning into an expensive thing to do if every individual network has just one show you want to watch.

Yeah, I haven't had cable in 12 years or so. It's been a combination of OTA television (local news, some prime time television now that they're mostly off the reality television bender they were on for ten years) and torrenting. If I'm going to pay $15 a month for something as limited as what CBS is offering, it better be advertising free.

I think it loses the ability to call itself a "TV series" when it refuses to air over a conventional method for getting television into your home... Just sayin'. I love Trek, but I hope this flops so CBS will know their service is lame. (But if it flops, CBS will likely blame Trek and keep pushing ahead with the service anyways).

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.