Not even that really. You ALWAYS needed third party apps to bring up the screen.

Here's the deal. This was never an end user feature. It was a screen that required additional software to actually bring up. It wasn't documented. I'm not even sure how anyone found out about it - my guess is someone trawling through the source code. Google's assertion that this wasn't meant to ever be released appears to be completely genuine and the apparent insinuation by the summary that Google isn't telling the truth is absurd and unfounded.

This is not to argue that the feature wouldn't be welcome. But as someone who used the equivalent functionality in CyanogenMod for a while, I can confirm that turning off permissions dynamically in this way requires quite a bit more care than it might appear at first - apps did crash when apparently denied features quite reasonably, even when you might think they'd have to cater for that situation anyway. I'd deny network privileges to an app, and see it crash, even though it would work without problems when the privilege was given but the network was unavailable for technical reasons.

Unfortunately, because Google has (objectively) gone to shit lately, and because they've lost some goodwill in their recent move towards closing much of Android ecosystem, combined with Facebook and Apple's paid anti-Google shilling campaign, this story is being presented as yet more evidence that Google is doing something wrong.

They're not. They've removed an undocumented part of the operating system that required third party software to access in the first place, that attempted to do something that requires thought, care, and planning. Good. Now, le'ts hope they finish what they started, and release a working version.

"the highly anticipated and near-capacity Donkey Kong world championship, held at the 1UP arcade and bar."

*Yawn* looking at the images I can find on the web, "capacity" is maybe a couple of hundred people. You'd have to have a very narrow special interest or live in a very remote area to *not* be able to gather that kind of 'crowd'.

This isn't even slightly hard.

Step 1: Require that the companies collect the information and retain it.
Step 2: Get a court order when you need to obtain information about a specific individual, and then obtain only that information.

It's not the metadata that's the problem. It's the fact that you're in possession of it, not just for the people you're legitimately investigating, but for everybody, and the fact that with our legal system being as complex as it is, you can almost certainly find patterns sufficient to suspect any honest person of a crime.

For example, I recently received an email about repairing strings of Christmas lights from someone whose last name is Snowden. Assuming that there's some relation, there's a good chance that my metadata is caught up in one of these f**king dragnets even though I have jack s**t to do with the guy who released confidential info from our government. There's no legitimate reason for them to study me—I'm pretty boring, frankly—but I would not be in the least bit surprised if it happened.

He claimed that Blizzard aims for a "comic book style"

Has Dustin Browder even seen a comic book lately?

This isn't the '80s. Most women in comic books today don't run around looking like silicone-augmented strippers. Unless the character happens to be a silicone-augmented stripper, of course.

Comic books have moved on from objectifying women, why hasn't the gaming industry?

Seriously though, as long as boobs sell stuff, we'll have boobs everywhere.

But "sell stuff" to whom?

I've got a feeling that a lot of people in gaming are still living in the days where only men make purchasing decisions, because penis=power.

I didn't think about this stuff until I saw my daughter grow up and play video games. She would always pick the skinny girl character when she was given the opportunity. Fortunately, because there is a much wider variety of male character body-types, she was usually able to find a slender (effeminate) male character, usually in classes of "thief" or "mage". I noticed that she would never play a game where the main character was a big male body-builder type or a buxom female in a skimpy costume, usually because she'd want to know why the character didn't have armor and if she did have armor, why didn't it cover up her cleavage because that's a pretty vulnerable area, you know? We talked about it later, when she was 19-20, and she laughed about how female characters' armor almost always looks like it was designed by Victoria's Secret and didn't look like it could offer any protection.

So now she's in her early 20's and just doesn't really play video games any more. I see her showing an interest in Path of Exile and a few others, but the gaming industry lost a customer, I think, because of its depiction of women. The men in her social group are still playing (and buying) but the young women, not so much. She was an avid gamer.

This sounds like it's an issue to me. Like the industry's leaving money on the table.

Ford Self-Driving R&D Car Tells Small Animal From Paper Bag At 200 Ft.

Why?

Ever since the Snowden's leak started some months ago to appear I've been awaiting for NSA's counter-strike.

I believe this is it.

I have the feeling that this "news" is a set-up. It's designed to accomplish 3 missions at the same time:

This may be the start of NSA's worldwide diversion campaign, to shift the focus away from NSA to Assange.

By "leaking out" Assange's "wiretapping news" online, for just a couple of hours, followed by a sudden removal of all evidences, NSA is betting that the dog and pony show would piqued the interests of many.

The fact that the Wired magazine has that piece of "news" covered so prominently means that NSA's tactic is working very, very well.

Not only Assange has become a really "evil dude", people will no longer believe all subsequent disclosures from whistle blowers, no matter who they are.

And that plays into NSA's hand --- for people won't believe any more news from the Snowden files, no matter how damaging they are.

Then it's those people who have a state of mind, not the corporation. When those people leave, the state of mind goes with them. Thus, the corporation never had a "state of mind".

Because it lacks a mind. A corporation is a golem.

That's a good point.

A transaction of morality cannot be conducted with an amoral entity.

I like that clarification.

... while flying ?

I mean, inside the cabin of a plane flying 30000 feet in the air is the only place on earth (aside from our own safe-houses) that we can get off people talking on their cells, people streaming porns, people wasting time (and money) playing online games and so on.

Why can't people just relax and enjoy the peace and quiet ?

Why must they bring all those hustle and bustle into one of the last quiet spaces left ?

Bitcoin, until now, is still an UNREGISTERED and totally UNRECOGNIZED entity, according to the laws of the United States of America (since it's the US treasury we are talking, let's limit the discussion to the US laws).

Stocks, on the other hand, are items that are recognized under the United States' laws, and the issuance of stock, the printing of stock certs, and so forth, have to abide by the LAWS, as they were written when the certs were being printed.

In other words, the authority actually has NO JURISDICTION WHATSOEVER to interfere with the activities of that maker of Bitcoin Token since what he did was akin to making some toy coins, use for arcade machines.

It's true that he has less lawyers than the stock cert printers, but still, the authority just does not have ANY RIGHT to interfere with an LAWFUL ACTIVITY (making toy coin) of a LAWFUL COMPANY (which is dully registered according to the laws where the company is located).

The United States of America of today is becoming more and more like the China that I ran away from, back in the early 1970's.

Back when I first reached the U. S. of A., it was a country in which the LAWS were still obeyed.

Back when I ran away from China, it was a country where LAWS WERE MEANINGLESS.

Now it looks like the United States of America is trying very hard to change role with that of China.

While China is getting more and more civilized (they still have a VERY LONG WAY TO GO), America is behaving more and more rogue.

It saddens me a lot watching my adopted country slowly turns into the country where I was born.

When we open a bank account, we place our trust to that bank, and that bank has the responsibility to protect our account with it.

When we shop at a store with a credit card, we place our trust on the integrity of the store and also that of the credit card company (with the bank issuing that credit card).

And if we do not lose our credit cards, but the information regarding our cards was stolen somewhere , who should we blame ?

Do we blame the one who stole the information or the one who were so fucking careless with the sensitive information in the first place ?

Let us understand this one thing - if you really want to blame, blame those institutions that has betrayed our trust.

The hackers are only exploiting the opportunities left OPENED by those fuckers who were so careless.

If ever there were damages, stop blaming the guy who operated a website - blame those motherfucking banks and credit card companies !

Because they will be using their electric cars to power Mechagodzilla!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechagodzilla

Has the gaming industry really not yet reached the point where a female character can be portrayed without enormous breasts spilling out of her costume?

I've got nothing wrong with enormous breasts or skimpy costumes, but is the gaming industry really happy being a male-only endeavor?

Games are filled with adolescent depictions of women and male characters with enormous powerful leg muscles, indicating that the young men who play games must be pretty sexually conflicted. Actually that sounds about right.

Seriously, in Arkham Origins, for some reason Batman's legs are drawn completely out of proportion to the rest of his body. He's supposed to be a big strong guy, but I don't remember him looking like a normal athlete on the top half and Mr Universe on the bottom half.

There are lots of examples of male characters drawn as old and skinny, short and fat, strong and weak, handsome and ugly. But the female characters in those same games are all triple-E cups and dressed as if by Frederick of Hollywood.

And yet, interestingly, if you look at the characters that players design for themselves (when the games give them the opportunity), they tend to look a lot more like normal people. I've seen people playing Saints Row IV as middle-aged black women and balding Hispanic construction workers. And yet, when the developers define the look of the character, it's always the same thing.

Dad was a Rugged Man. Rugged, ate meat that was still mooing, Smoked Cuban Cigars and swilled the finest Whiskey.

Explains why I keep trying to refill myself with Johnny Walker Blue.