@Velv - (Unfortunately) you are wrong!

While I find Apple's behaviour in this contemptible, your comment "The Bank is taking the credit risk, not Apple" is not actually correct in the harsh reality of business banking.

I used to run a small web-based retain business and I used to accept credit/debit card payments. It's all unnecessarily complicated, but basically, if you are a company and the target of credit card fraud then I wish you the very best of luck getting your money back from the bank after you have shipped the purchased goods and then find out the card was used fraudulently. The bank will usually point at clause xyz and tell you to whistle.

It really annoys me when I see adverts aimed at Jo Public with tag lines along the gist of "don't worry about using your card on-line - we (the bank) will make sure you don't lose out". Notice that the banks DON'T say that THEY will cover the costs. That's because they don't! They pass the buck on to the retailer. This is why the banks have never really taken credit card fraud seriously. Because most of the time, the cost to the bank is nothing; either the customer pays or the retailer pays.

Re: For goodness' sake

At last - Someone said it!

Javascript is an abhorrence. It's a close thing, but JS (and while we're at it, Perl) has to be well up there as one of the very worse languages ever invested. I think "unreadable, convoluted filth" is good place to start. It even makes Visual Basic look good!

IMAP IDLE?

IMAP does a very good job at (unnecessary relatively recent buzz word) "push" email - it's called IDLE. It works. It's a well understood and supported standard. But like so many things, it's not MS-specific so MS won't support it.

I DO find all this very very funny - watching MS squirm over something that they have been doing since year dot. Oh, how times change.

Re: More PC over-reaction

Actually, a "Make Me White" app would probably cause even more of a storm!

....but if a "Make Me White" app is racist and a "Make Me Asian" app is also racist (and presumably also a "Make Me Black" app etc etc) then ...errr ....if EVERYTHING to do with race ...errrr .....racist?

We really are a fucked-up species - we really do deserve to self-destruct. Oh hang on, I forgot. We're already working on that!

Calamari? I think not

Squid this size are full of ammonia. You wouldn't want to eat it

@JDX

"Also - how come we bash Adobe for being buggy and dangerous, but nearly all the exploits are Windows-only?"

I hate Windows as much as the next geek, but even I struggle to blame MS when I'm using a Mac, or Linux, or BSD, or......

Re: Why in this day and age...

The last time I looked, Android did not implement client certificates in its SSL stack - the functionality just wasn't there. It's why I eventually gave up trying to get IMAP email working on it.

No idea if client cert support is included now, but if now, this (and maybe other omissions) could explain why at least some of the apps use their own libraries?

Re: So do we get 2 years in the UK?

Errr.... you're not the only one!

Is this some blindingly obvious law that nobody has actually been told about? Anyone know for sure?

Re: But what about Kindle books?

And therein lies the rub. Not just with this, but with the Kindle, anything with 'i' at the start of its name, and several other offerings.

I really do think we've gone backwards - back in the 70's there were the Unix wars and other such events which basically revolved around big companies trying to lock-in their customers. Everyone sighed with relief when this all came to an end with the open architecture that was the PC. Even when MS got its claws on it, it's Mickey Mouse OS's were still pretty open and you could pretty much do what you liked.

Since Apple started to rise from the ashes, we have (and still are) inexorably falling back into a culture of lock-in. Except it's arguably even worse now because what is being locked-in is stuff that has previously been open and freely available (and no, I don't mean pirate-able), like music, and books and other media. I'm guessing it will go on for a few years (maybe a decade or so) before someone comes up with another "PC" and suddenly everyone will be sighing with relief at the "new" open architecture that we can pretty much do anything we like with. Until then, it looks like walled gardens (gilded prisons) , lock-in and general control over what we do and what we don't do with stuff we've bought will continue for some time.

Re: 2 birds with one stone

I'm shocked to hear that Java is taught as a "first" language.

In my mind, the "problem" with Java is that most of the people that use it seem to have no appreciation of what happens "under to hood" (to use that dreadful American expression). As a result, they quite happily write a few lines of code that look cool and do the job in hand, but they completely fail to understand the massive complexity and (often) massive inefficiency going on behind the scenes. Because of this, their Java code might work and it might "do a job" but it does it in a hugely inefficient way.

If you learn something like plain old C, or assembler, then you (should!) never fall into this trap because the stark realities of what is going on is blindingly clear to you, and you are forced to think (or at least you should be) of efficient ways of doing stuff.

A related problem is that Java is simply too high level. You don't need to think about what's going on underneath to make it work, so you don't. And so you never actually learn the low level stuff. And without the low level knowledge, you can't hope to write good software that is fast, efficient, fully debugged, and stable. I quite like PHP (or I used to - I fear it's going down the same bloated path as Perl), but I would never consider using it for anything "serious".

Java is the Visual Basic of the modern age (not that it's that modern any more); yes, it works. Yes, it might "do a job", but it promotes some very very bad habits, and, quite frankly, crappy programmers, because they don't actually understand what they are doing, even if they think they do. It's the equivalent of doing one of those numpty courses to teach you how to use MS Word, and then declaring that you "can do computers". It's exactly why the industry is is constantly complaining that the quality of graduates is not good enough.

Re: Bloody wonderful, dont idiots ever think first?

"...give governments a reason to regulate 3D printing."

Or, maybe a better idea, would be to do what the the saner parts of the world do and have the US govt regulate gun ownership? Now there's an idea!!

Alternatively, start a new campaign - "Guns don't kill people - printers do!". The whole gun ownership thing in the US is so bloody stupid, you literally couldn't make it up for even the blackest of satires. I can't imagine someone in (say) the UK openly advertising on the web that he's managed to build a bloody machine gun at home (and yes, I know it's not technically a machine gun). Absolutely insane.

Re: Not natural

No, you're not.

If you dig about, you'll also find pics of some odd and massive structures on Iapetus that defy any sort of known natural explanation. The oddest thing about anything like this though is that NASA seem to almost deliberately ignore it (not just on Iapetus, of course, but on the moon and on Mars); if they saw these things on Earth they'd be sending a team to go and investigate on the double.

Obvious solution...

...is to not subject your PS3 to a smoky environment. Computer kit, of whatever type, is generally not at home in such an atmosphere. Neither are most people come to that.

Re: Rip-offs

Top rant! Shame it doesn't actually make any sense (and I did try reading it a couple of times).

Arrggghhhh!!!!

The Linux people have brought this on themselves. They have been allowing binary blobs (mostly drivers) into the code-base for years. The argument for this is, of course, that it allows Linux to acquire functionality that would otherwise be denied. While I can see the argument, the ultimate conclusion of this action is that you'll finally end up in the situation where more and more hardware manufacturers do the same thing, to the point where you don't have the source code for ANY of the drivers in your kernel! Which is a ridiculous situation.

I've recently been looking at putting together a Linux box for running MythTV. I very quickly found out that it's a non-trivial exercise getting the video to work. Apparently, Radeon chips are a non-starter which (many people agree) is a real shame because they have (arguably) much superior video post-processing capabilities compared to nVidia. the point is, we have here and now, a situation where critical bits of hardware will not work with Linux without the use of the respective blob. And the blobs are typically buggy, lack critical functionality, or fail to work for some other complex reason. And there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about it.

The BSDs have been campaigning for years to not allow blobs in. FreeBSD (I think) ended up relenting, but OpenBSD has stood their ground. And yes, you could point and laugh and say "oh, yes, but so-and-so doesn't work on openBSD", and you might be right, but at least they have all the code for ALL their drivers, which is a lot more than Linux can say (and by the way, OBSD has far better WiFi Support than Linux). OpenBSD dropped support for Adaptec disc driver chips some years ago because after many frustrating years of trying to get enough info out of them just so a driver could be written, they finally lost patience and decided it wasn't worth it. On the other hand, OBSD has had some major successes getting h/w manufacturers to release the required info. If Linux took the same tack, then by now there would be some very big players video / ethernet / wifi manufacturers getting their fingers out and releasing this sort of info because the cost to them if they don't is loss of sales.

Many people have been saying for years that there should be a licensing clause in the Linux OS to prevent blob inclusion (but then again, this should not be needed - it's Linux people's short-sightedness and impatience that is the problem). And now that Linux is becoming much more important, we're in a mess that we can not be able to get out of, and are being held to ransom.

Re: linux gpl

While I agree with what you're saying, why not use BSD or some other non-GPL OS. Apart from being better designed, and simpler, there are no GPL worries to get in the way.

Of course it's not just the OS that's an issue when it comes to GPL, but it's a good start and there are many alternatives to GPL libraries and applications anyway.

I blame the FA and FIFA

While I agree that Sky has not been a healthy influence on football, I blame the FA and FIFA just as much, and probably more.

For a very long time now, the FA (and FIFA) have not cared a sod about football. The only thing they care about is money. If they cared about football, we wouldn't have the ludicrous situation where the tickets to see a match are so expensive that only the reasonably wealthy can afford to go. We wouldn't have football clubs going bust every couple of months because player wages have reaches such stratospheric levels of stupidity. And we wouldn't have the crazy situation where a TV company has to pay millions and millions just to show a game. It wouldn't be so bad if all this money sloshing about actually went back into football. But it doesn't. Most of it goes into paying a few dozen players and shareholders, all of which play for the same handful of teams. The teams in the lower leagues hardly get a look-in, and as for any non-league teams - you know, the ones that bring new talent into the game - forget it - they get squat!

Recent events at FIFA have shown what a shambles that particular institution is. It's rotten to the core. Everyone knows it, but there's so much money at stake that nobody wants to do anything about it. The FA and FIFA are a disgrace.

Re: Get rid of java

Does Java support enumerations now? The last time I played with it (ooo... 10+ years ago?), you had to use some crazy structure to 'simulate' an enumeration. And I agree; lack of unsigned is just plain stupid and indicative of the half-baked lanhuage that Java is. Oh, and while you're at it, no multiple inheritance (I like to throw that one in because it seems I'm the only person in the world that thinks multiple inheritance can be useful). Java is also responsible for breeding a whole generation of third-rate softies who's idea of efficient and small is "it runs ok(ish) on a 3GHz quad core monster", and "it's smaller than 500MB" respectively.

And on a completely different tack, as far as I know (and apparently well illustrated by recent events), Java still isn't completely "free" and many people have been warning for years of the potential for the mess that we're now witnessing in the latest Oracle/Google spat. But, of course, many more people have chosen not to listen

Ok, rant over.

Ah, you've noticed then? :-)

I'm afraid you are spot on with what you say, and the problems are endemic in almost all consumer electronics companies (where, of course the 'electronics' is increasingly almost exclusively 'software'). The basic issues are:

- Timescales. There is never enough time. Ever.

- Managers that have strange priorities and odd ideas about what is acceptable and what is not.

- Patents. The industry is so riddled with this stuff now that virtually all products are purposely sub-optimal to avoid some patent or other.

- Software kids that are (quite frankly) ...and I'll be polite here ...crap. They have no idea about embedded systems (I can only guess they were taught on a PC with Java, or maybe Python, and gigabytes of memory and trillions of ops/sec). They often have no idea about good software design practice (sorry, did I say 'design'? Oops!). They can't code even if they you pay them (oh, hang on, they ARE being paid!). They're just not up to it.

One other problem that I have seen time and time again is the culture surrounding production of software. This comes from the yanks, but unfortunately has been picked-up by pretty much everyone in the far east, which is why most of the consumer stuff these days is rubbish. That is, given a software project, they chop it up in teeny tiny bits, give each teeny tiny bit to one person, and then try and glue it all together at the end. And while said bod is working on his/her teeny tiny bit, he/she comes across a problem that can't be immediately solved, they decide to split the problem off into an even smaller teeny tiny bit in the (apparent) hope that someone else will fix it at some point in the future. This means that the difficult stuff gets left later and later so when it is eventually tackled, it's done in a rush and probably by someone who's either not very good or who's been working 18 hours/day for the last month (not a joke) to get the thing out of the door. Of course, when it comes to gluing all these teeny bits together, the glue is often bigger than the "working" (I use the term loosely) code, and the whole thing needs a processor upgrade to run at all!! I wish it was funny, but it's not.

These issues all combine and result in products that are far far from optimal. When, for example, did it become acceptable for my DVD player to take 2 minutes to boot up? My old DVD player started up almost instantly. The EPG on my TV often craps out and I have to switch it off. Why? (That's a rhetorical question by the way, I know exactly why).

As for you point re warranties, this was supposed to have been tackled years ago by re-defining software as "goods" rather than as a "service". For reasons unknown, this never happened. If is had, then the software would be subject to the sale of goods act (notably the bit about "fit for purpose"). Your TV and DVD player etc might be a whole lot more reliable if this happened.