If these politicians want the problem solved,

They don't. They want to play for the cameras and if they can also get another excuse to lock down the Internet, all the better for the Lidless Eye.

These people are simply never happy as long as anyone else is.

Unfortunately there has been a trend lately on Slashdot where the editors accept a lot of stories from people linking to their own site. I guess this is acceptable in the Twitter world but doesn't match a meritocracy where users submit interesting stories instead of pumping up their page views.

I don't think the editors have a choice in the matter. Slashdot is corporate, thus it must deliver bigger numbers every quarter or be labeled a failure and discontinued. Finding a niche and delivering a steady stream of eyeballs to advertisers isn't sexy with higher-ups, because they in turn must deliver exponential growth to shareholders. But exponential growth is only possible when you're way below what the environment can support, so the staff implements random changes to be seen doing something, which in turn end up driving existing users away.

People need to understand that the Web is not the frontier anymore. Dotcom bubble came and went, and sites like Slashdot are mature (boring) businesses which simply aren't going to grow significantly anymore. Put them into maintenance mode and use their steady revenue as venture capital to fund developing new, exciting things.

I've never understood why it can't do this during the 10 hours a night that I am not using the laptop instead of doing it when I need to quickly shut down and leave the house or quickly shut down and leave work.

Windows is codependent, it wants your attention at all times. And this is unlikely to get any better now that that attention is worth money.

However, smart insurance companies will see this as a dangerous erosion of their market, and will probably fight against this...

Actually, isn't this the ideal case for the insurance companies? All they need to know is the software version the car is using to know exactly how it drives.

Okay, so whyTF did the company decide to fire the guy without going through the agreed-on procedure?

Because Mr. Someone living Somewhere never lived anywhere, or existed for that matter. It's just an urban legend someone decided to believe because it confirms their political beliefs.

They've made it abundantly clear that's not what they are paying you for, so oblige them, even going so far as to gleefully compound their organizational problems.

Don't go that far. Intentional sabotage due to dislike might be emotionally satisfying but also both illegal and morally wrong.

Also, bad organizational cultures are so destructive because they slowly become the invisible default against which everything is judged. And they become invisible by encountering no resistance from those who can see them until they become so accustomed to them that they don't notice them anymore. Perhaps you don't have a duty to try to save the company from itself, but if you won't, you also won't get to complain about the resulting suck, since it's the result of your (in)action - in other words, your fault.

Note that if NSA is doing its job properly, you'll never hear about its successes.

Don't we hear about foiled terrorist plots and infiltrated groups all the time?

Also, one might argue that as an institution in a democratic society, NSA isn't doing its job properly unless you, the citizen, hear enough about its successes and failures to form an informed opinion about it. Because that's what democracy is: subjecting the institutions - both organizations and traditions - of the society to the will of the people.

Back in the real world, this is probably the first time Microsoft released a new version of Windows and no-one really cared. All the interesting new technology is elsewhere.

Of course, if (and that's a big if) Microsoft can get Hololens to work well, they pretty much have a killer application at their hands. Imagine mechanics seeing the schematics projected into whatever they're maintaining, builders seeing the outline of whatever they're building, maintenance workers seeing the outline of wires inside the wall, industrial workers seeing nearby pipes color-coded for the substance flowing through them, drivers seeing cars with high collision probability highlighted...

The real money is not in shiny desktop OS's, or even mobile, but in making a million everyday tasks slightly more efficient - injecting just the right amount of information at the right time and the right place to eliminate the stall as people check things out.

I would disagree with this. As has been proven by high rollers on both the right and left. You're immoral billionaire's money is just as good to these 'hoes as corporate money.

Because a billionaire is just as much a product of the system than a company is. Nobody makes a billion dollars through their own work, they make it by extracting value from other people's work. Which means their wealth is a product of and dependent on the system, thus they can be trusted to be utterly loyal to the system - slaves with golden chains, but slaves nonetheless.

Kings might have had it better than peasants, but neither could opt out of feudalism. It wasn't until capitalism - a new system - began making inroads that new opportunities opened up. And now capitalism is worn at the seams, at least in the developed world, and a seemingly neverending cascade of problems defy attempts to solve them through means acceptable to the system, which has caused a predictable retreat into fundamentalism - in this case free-market fundamentalism - for many who are heavily invested in the system. Whether this is the final crisis of capitalism, or whether it can ride out the storm once again by lifting the rest of the world to the developed status remains to be seen - but either way, it won't last forever any more than any previous system has.

We're not okay with campaign spending. I don't think anyone is, but how else do you reach 300+ million people?

Via the Internet, of course. Have each candidate publish a profile on candidates.gov.

In this case, you need a permit to use the park. Their permit said that they would not have this wanted fugitive perform. They violated the terms of their permit, so were shut down.

But that doesn't answer the question: what right does the city, which manages public spaces such as parks on behalf of the public, has to put arbitrary conditions on their use by said public?

This is yet another an example of the industry trend to make all personal computing devices, from desktop workstations to wrist-band gadgets, merely "dumb terminals" that are completely beholden to a distant server. Software will inevitably become a service that will be metered out by a distant authority like water or electricity.

It's not limited to software but is the whole idea of an economy built on disposable products: since nothing lasts, you are effectively renting everything and since you're renting everything, you can't build up wealth except in the form of "financial instruments" who's demand - and thus value - is thus artificially inflated.

Uncontrollable reboots. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that.

Fixed that for you.

Or you could run the software in a VM and have the host OS capture the screenshot, if they manage to implement invasive DRM.

Or you could simply not run the software at all and only lose messages even the sender's drunk ass knew they would be ashamed of in the morning. And possibly the occasional extortion scheme.

Apparently these hoes are for sale, so what's left to be determined is the price.

They aren't for sale to you. Their (real) job is to maintain the system; they get paid a commission from their current corporate patron. They aren't interested in your money, you're a mere mortal.