The Biggest Tech Mishap of 2013? 162
Nerval's Lobster writes "Some high-profile tech initiatives really crashed-and-burned this year. Did BlackBerry executives really think that BlackBerry 10 would spark a miraculous turnaround, or were they simply going through the motions of promoting it? That's the key question as BlackBerry 10 devices fail to sell. Then there's Facebook's misbegotten attempt at 'skinning' the Android OS with its Home app. Or maybe Healthcare.gov counts as 2013's biggest debacle, with its repeated crashes and glitches and inability to carry out core functions. What do you think was the biggest software or hardware (or both) mishap of the past twelve months?"
All of the above (Score:1)
Re:All of the above (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The latter didn't affect the rest of the world. People outside of the US don't give a fuck about Healthcare.gov... and I bet it's not even close to many of the mayor epic fails that populate the pages of The Register and similar.
You should just see the mess we have here with our digital travel cards (OV Chipkaart) which is ongoing for a few years right now and which is like a pearl necklace of fuck ups one after the other, from the hardware (easy to crack, 100% error rate) to the software and ending in the
My company (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
if you haven't changed jobs, please accept whatever happens to your career as obvious and totally your fault.
That's happening, but I'm not worried about my career. I'm get hired for my skills and one of my skills is knowing how to make a resume look good.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm get hired for my skills and one of my skills
is clearly not proofreading grammar in the morning.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm get hired for my skills and one of my skills
is clearly not proofreading grammar in the morning.
and i"m detale oriented,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, and I know grammar, too.
Is that sentence the demonstration of your grammar skills?
NSA leaking (Score:4, Insightful)
NSA leak was the most damagind and biggest tech fail.
They still don't know what was taken.
Re: (Score:1)
Apparently they pretty much do.
DOD official: Snowden ‘stole everything — literally everything’ [dailycaller.com]
Re:NSA leaking (Score:5, Interesting)
Then why does the economic damage predate the leak? Everyone knew what was going on from the days of the AT&T disclosure, Snowden only provided the physical evidence for Americans to act on it. I happen to have a little experience with the intelligence community, had a great uncle that was OSS when it incepted to be the CIA in 1947. Keep secrets they did, spy on Americans; no they didn't, weaken encryption resulting in fraudulent sales of security devices, no they did not, were they saints, not really however that was a matter of prospective, but as a nation we were stronger. Our constitution meant something then, so did a mans word, and sworn oath.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Given the size of the organization and number of people that have access to NSA 'secrets', I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians don't already have the files
Slash!dot Beta (Score:5, Insightful)
taco must be turning in his grave
Re: (Score:1)
Every year even worse, even more generic layout. How pathetic
Re: (Score:2)
taco must be turning in his grave
Bring out your beta! Bring out your beta! Bring out your beta! Bring out your beta!
Here's one
9 pence
I'm not dead!
What?
Nothing, here's your 9 pence.
I'm not dead!
'ere, he says he's not dead.
Yes he is.
I'm not!
He isn't?
Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
I'm getting better!
Re:Slash!dot Beta (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
article is a dupe http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/the-biggest-tech-whiffs-of-2013/ [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:1)
At the bottom of the page for Slashdot Beta is a link they have now added to go back to Slashdot Classic which works for me whenever I am forced to that Beta monstrosity.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why are you using that gawdoffal interface? Just use the classic interface. I tried the beta for all of two minutes, UGH!
It's telling, though, that the beta interface is so horrible that an offtopic comment that only mentions how horrible the beta is gets moderated 4, insightful. Slashdot staff, are you listening to your users?
I'd say the target hack... (Score:4, Insightful)
They lost credit card numbers... pin codes!? and the c v v codes?!?!?!? what. the. fuck.
Why were they even storing those. at all. thats some world class fuckup that's going to cost many thousands of people real money. Theres no writeoff for regular people unlike businesses. People are Fucked...
Altho it's slightly more than a "mishap".
It's either that or the obamacare fuckup. But really who expected a goverment website to work right... Thats like a normal fuckup for us.
Or maybe the NSA being such treasonous completely useless wastes of space and money who should all be swinging at the end of a rope.
But that goes beyond just this year too. They've been shitheads for a long time. We just now know about it for sure.
Re: I'd say the target hack... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
card number and cvv. that's enough to clone you up some cards and go on a shopping spree.
Re: (Score:2)
That's easy.... (Score:1)
"Some high-profile tech initiatives really crashed-and-burned this year. Did BlackBerry executives really think that BlackBerry 10 would spark a miraculous turnaround, or were they simply going through the motions of promoting it? That's the key question as BlackBerry 10 devices fail to sell. Then there's Facebook's misbegotten attempt at 'skinning' the Android OS with its Home app. Or maybe Healthcare.gov counts as 2013's biggest debacle, with its repeated crashes and glitches and inability to carry out core functions. What do you think was the biggest software or hardware (or both) mishap of the past twelve months?"
Healthcare.gov? That's a junior league fuck-up... I nominate the NSA for getting pwned and punked by one Edward Joseph Snowden who walked out of their secure computer facility with all of Americas dirty laundry on a USB stick.
Re:That's easy.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Healthcare.gov? That's a junior league fuck-up... I nominate the NSA for getting pwned and punked by one Edward Joseph Snowden who walked out of their secure computer facility with all of Americas dirty laundry on a USB stick.
Too bad it's pretty much amounted to nothing positive thus far. The president hasn't done shit to change anything, congress critters NEVER do shit (except contribute massive amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere), and the general public pretty much doesn't give a shit. Don't get me wrong, Snowden's a hero in my book, but the revelations really haven't had a significant impact on US society as a whole, sad as that may be.
Re: (Score:2)
It has cost US companies money. Money is the only language that the US government, owned by corporations, seems to understand. I'm still hopeful that it has a bigger effect, but it will take time. Contracts won't be renewed, business will be lost to other countries.
Once it becomes clear that the NSA is affecting US corporations profit, once the first poor quarterly earnings are blamed on them, once the people holding the purse strings (lobbyists) start to care...
My vote is for (Score:2, Insightful)
The NSA's exfiltration detection system...
Snowden (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The post is talking about mishaps not miracles assface.
Re: (Score:3)
Or, more importantly, giving your Sharepoint admin who has a copy of the constitution sitting next to his keyboard, wears an EFF hoodie that mocks the NSA to work every day, and has turned down promotions due to moral objections to the agencies activities full admin access to everything you have.
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Windows 8 is definitely helping the cause
Linux dominates the mobile world with Android
ChromeOS (another Linux-based operating system) is apparently very popular and already has nearly 25% of new laptop sales in the US
There's SteamOS which is a big question mark still
ZOMG It could actually happen in 2014!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Twasnt I, asshole.
I'm not really a huge ChromeOS fan, I think web apps are made of fail.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They wont.
Re: (Score:1)
The year of the Linux desktop. But, dammit, 2014 is DEFINITELY going to be THE year!!!
Well, Android smartphones and tablets are thriving which makes for linux on mobiles. And now that Steam is available on linux and the steambox is announced, so I can certainly see more people sticking to Linux for most uses. Heck, I'm in a windows software development firm and convinced my boss before the holidays that I was more effective on linux with Debian+git+Vim+KVM+Wine+mono than whatever the "MS suggested dev environment" is.
So for all that's practical from my point of view, 2014 is already THE yea
Re: (Score:1)
"OSS" is much bigger than the GPL.
GPL is mainly Stallman-ish "Free Software" flag waving bearded digital tailban types who don't use the internet because it impinges on their freedoms.
OSS is everything between that and proprietary software.
Windows 8 (Score:5, Interesting)
For demonstrating that forcing a tablet interface on desktop users does not help your bottom line.
Re: (Score:2)
HealthCare.gov, by a mile (Score:2, Interesting)
No contest. It's got everything: hubris, cronyism, bureaucratic bungling, political idiocy, numerous huge IT errors, hundreds of millions of dollars. Once all the details come out, this massive fail will be studied in universities. Books will be written. The political consequences will last for years. Coming soon: the doctor shortages. And does everyone know that in 2014, the health plan tax kicks in? I don't mean the "Cadillac plan" tax, or the tax if you don't have insurance. I mean the 2% tax on every he [nypost.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Doctor shortages? Big deal.
Re: (Score:1)
Doctor shortage? There are thirteen of him and he makes house calls anywhere in time and space.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No contest. It's got everything: hubris, cronyism, bureaucratic bungling, political idiocy, numerous huge IT errors, hundreds of millions of dollars. Once all the details come out, this massive fail will be studied in universities. Books will be written. The political consequences will last for years. Coming soon: the doctor shortages. And does everyone know that in 2014, the health plan tax kicks in? I don't mean the "Cadillac plan" tax, or the tax if you don't have insurance. I mean the 2% tax on every health plan. [nypost.com] Yes, in order to make health insurance more "affordable," they are taxing health insurance! Words fail.
Yep.
The idea that there is even some question about what the biggest tech mishap of 2013 is says a lot about Slashdot/techie politics. When you go all in for someone, it's very hard to admit later that you were wrong.
Re:HealthCare.gov, by a mile (Score:5, Insightful)
What's funny is that the person you are quoting barely even mentions the TECH mishap - he sums it up as "numerous huge IT errors" but then goes on a rant about things that have NOTHING to do with the fucked up launch of healthcare.gov, but you want to claim that other people can't seem to separate their politics from their ability to assess the success or failure of a tech project. What the ever loving fuck does someone saying there will be doctor shortages, or a 2% tax, have to do with the website sucking? Nothing. Stop projecting your partisanship onto other people.
Personally I hate the ACA because it isn't single payer and all it will wind up doing is delaying actual healthcare reform in this country by decades while simultaneously keeping a useless industry alive. In any case, this story isn't about politics, it's about tech fuckups in 2013. So:
As an IT project, Healthcare.gov was an abortion. You had project management that was behaving in a fairly schizophrenic fashion (namely, political leadership who were battling over the ACA trying to repeal/defend it) leading to delays in starting implementation, you had incompetent contractors hired to put it out, you had incompetent developers building it (my god, the amount of pointless data streaming up and down was staggering, the front end code we could see was incompetent at best, the whole mess was completely non-performant) and then to top it off, as a post-mortem it seems that most were trying to assign blame and score political gotcha points and throwing up all kinds of irrelevant shit rather than just dealing with reality and trying to do a solid job implementing the law of the land.
I do agree there can be no doubt that Healthcare.gov is the absolute biggest fuck-up of the year.
Though my vote for worst tech issue of the year definitely goes to the NSA stuff - I'll take a thousand shitty websites over big brother any day.
Re: (Score:2)
What the ever loving fuck does someone saying there will be doctor shortages, or a 2% tax, have to do with the website sucking? Nothing.
No, it's all connected. The entire "health care reform" project was a top-down, centrally-planned attempt to remake a huge portion of the economy. It was assembled into a massive bill that no one read, and forced through Congress on partisan lines. The website had to manifest this confused, partisan mess of idealistic hopes, economic fallacies, and outright lies, and it couldn't. It still can't. As originally conceived, it had to query existing databases at the IRS, HHS, Homeland Security, and Treasury. [nrcc.org] It
Re:HealthCare.gov, by a mile (Score:5, Insightful)
And does everyone know that in 2014, the health plan tax kicks in? I don't mean the "Cadillac plan" tax, or the tax if you don't have insurance. I mean the 2% tax on every health plan. Yes, in order to make health insurance more "affordable," they are taxing health insurance! Words fail.
Well, I'm assuming the goal is to use that money to provide health plans to those who can't afford them, obviously if more people get coverage than before and the costs per person don't go down the total will go up. Here in Norway it's a tax for employers when they pay me income, essentially for every 100 NOK I get they must pay 7.80 NOK to the government. If there's a street bum with no income, get still gets the same healthcare as me and obviously that's coming out of the pockets of everyone else. If we took away the tax and let everyone get their own insurance I'd be paying for just me, right? And the bum would probably die, but let's leave morality out it for a second.
By making sure everyone is in good health and vaccinated, we reduce the spread of disease and infection. If some of the uncovered people could get back into taxable work they could become an asset or at least less of a tax burden. Desperate people who need money for surgery can lead to crime and exploitation. And most of all, we don't throw hot potatoes around in the system trying to deny or revoke their coverage. The overhead is far less. I'm also fairly confident I will get an appropriate treatment based on medical needs, of course our doctors and nurses are just as human as anyone else but at least I'm not fighting a giant insurance company who want my treatment to be cheap as possible without getting sued and lose.
If you want to take non-tech mishaps then Obamacare is taking on all the challenges and costs of socialized medicine while providing little to none of the benefits other countries have. The Democrats sacrificed the soul of the system, while the Republicans have poisoned the apple so it's set up to fail. In a few years it'll be a disaster and everyone in the US will agree socialized medicine can't work, despite all the pointing to what happens in pinko commie land.
Re:HealthCare.gov, by a mile (Score:4, Informative)
The only input the Republicans had was forcing Congress to have to use the same plan. Any claim they changed the bill otherwise is an outright lie, period.
The subsidies, to make it affordable, are tax credits. If you pay no federal income tax (47% of the country) you get no subsidy. If you make under $17K you get no subsidy. It caps out, so if you make over $43K you get no subsidy. The amount of tax you pay on $43K is not much because of our tax system and deductions, and if your subsidy is greater than what you pay in federal income tax you don't get that extra.
The subsidies will help some people, but the LARGE MAJORITY will get nothing from it. The 47% who pay no taxes, or those who make too much, will get nothing leaving only a small percentage of citizens able to qualify for anything. Those who do qualify will get tiny amounts, regardless of what was promised by the web site.
The DNC knows this and is trying to figure out how to spin it. One of their failed attempts is to blame the GOP for writing it bad, like the above poster did, but everyone knows the GOP had nothing to do with it and didn't vote for it at all. They even managed to call it Obamacare, and Obama himself said he was proud to have it called that, now he regrets saying that and people are spinning that its only called that because of the GOP.
Just watch over the next year as the GOP is blamed for every single failure despite it being 100% written by, voted by, run by, and owned by the DNC.
Re: (Score:1)
The subsidies, to make it affordable, are tax credits. If you pay no federal income tax (47% of the country) you get no subsidy. If you make under $17K you get no subsidy. It caps out, so if you make over $43K you get no subsidy. The amount of tax you pay on $43K is not much because of our tax system and deductions, and if your subsidy is greater than what you pay in federal income tax you don't get that extra.
FYI, Refundable tax credits are not the same as tax deductions. That's a big fraud concerns, as the IRS pays out billions in unwarranted tax credits.
From: http://www.healthaffairs.org/healthpolicybriefs/brief.php?brief_id=97
"To help make premiums affordable, federal subsidies in the form of tax credits will be available for eligible individuals and families who purchase insurance through an exchange (see "Eligibility for Subsidies" below). The tax credits are refundable, which means that eligible taxpayers
Re: (Score:3)
The amount of tax you pay on $43K is not much because of our tax system and deductions
Bullshit, I make a little more than that but I'm paying thousands in federal tax; I pay thousands in federal income tax and even more in SS and Medicare tax.
As to Romney's "47% pay no federal tax", that's as much a lie as saying that Romney pays no Federal tax; his income is capital gains, which is covered by a different tax and not counted as regular income. Everyone who smokes a cigar or buys alcoholic beverages or driv
Re: (Score:1)
Well, I'm assuming the goal is to use that money to provide health plans to those who can't afford them, obviously if more people get coverage than before and the costs per person don't go down the total will go up.
But the 2% tax applies to all health plans (except Medicaid, I believe). Obamacare was sold as reducing the the cost of insurance for the average person. You don't lower the cost of anything by taxing it. And note that it was also sold as reducing the deficit, or at least not adding to it. That's another claim since exposed as untrue.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:HealthCare.gov, by a mile (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think the contractor deserves all the blame. They screwed up big-time, true, but they had a very difficult task, perhaps an impossible one. Communicating in real time with dozens of pre-existing government and insurance company databases is hard. They also had to dance to the tune of their political masters, so they got requirements late because the administration didn't want Republicans to know the gory details before the 2012 elections, and because the website flowchart was complicated by the fact that the administration didn't want visitors to see plan costs before subsidies, to reduce sticker shock.
I'm sure you know this, but ... (Score:3)
Whoever accepts the bid has only the track record of the bidder and their word to go by. Unless the bidder has a terrible, or complete lack of reputation, you can't really blame the person acce
Re: (Score:2)
Am I "the above poster" you are referring to? I can't tell. Sure, there are lots of lessons there for IT and project management types that are purely non-political, but as I said elsewhere, the Healthcare.gov mess in inextricably entwined with politics. Whether you care about politics or not, it's not off-topic to talk about how it make this disaster.
Whoever accepts the bid has only the track record of the bidder and their word to go by. Unless the bidder has a terrible, or complete lack of reputation, you can't really blame the person accepting the bid.
In this case, the contractor had a bad track record, but they had crony connections with the White House. [investors.com]
Re: (Score:2)
So now he's not only cheerleading but pretending to be stupid - hopefully just to be sarcastic.
They ALL have crony connections. That's what people in politics DO after they get thrown out. A crony is the price of admission and most places will have someone from the two major parites.
Not really by a mile (Score:2, Flamebait)
The political consequences will last for years. Coming soon: the doctor shortages.
Spoken like a true TeaParty ideologue. While the initial rollout of healthcare.gov was an unmitigated mess, the recovery will in time be recognized as one of the greatest tech successes. The initial design goal was for the website to be able to accommodate 50,000 simultaneous visitors. On Monday December 23rd the website was supporting 83,000 concurrent users. About 2 million people have enrolled into healthcare plans, 1.1 million through healthcare.gov. Quite a substantial number from those six people that
Re: (Score:1)
Those "millions of enrollments" include:
The number not in those categories is still unknown. Let's see what the real numbers are when the administration decides to release them.
Donglegate! (Score:1)
I nominate: (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's not a screw up, I don't know what is.
Re:I nominate: (Score:5, Insightful)
The Sim City 4 screwup is even larger than DRM servers.
They claimed the need the servers to simulate a total lot of the cities and that this was too much for the average PC. So the need to simulate the cities on the server. That was a lie. Sim City 4 is not really a good simulation, it works with very simplified models which create all kinds of odd occurances in the cities (which are totally unrealistic). For example? They simulate Sims in packs of 1000s, so skyscrapers are empty when one "sim pack" leaves. Every Sim drives the shortest route to the closest(!) place of work and also from there to the closest (!) free house. That leads to jammed roades even if a bypass freeway is near (and empty), this leads to entire regions where people cannot find work even if there's a lot of shops, these simplified simulations lead to all kinds of stupidity in a game that claims to be a "simulation".
Everyone said their maps are too small. They ignored it and now people complain the maps are too small.
People did want to build their city, but now are forced to build several small ones in their "regions", I guess the developers and publishers had the wet dream to create a large, buzzing online environment where ten people each build their small, specialised city in their own region and happily working together. But totally neglected that their audience wants to build their own megacity, not ten small pieces or one small piece and work with someone else.
Sim City 4 is acutally a bigger screwup than you make it out to be and what sets this apart from other "bad" games are two things: First the lies and the deliberate deception of game magazines and customers before the release who much the game would actually simulate. Second, the screwups are not issues of bad implementation or limited budget of a small developer who planned and wanted too much. Many of the really big, bad issues of this games are actually working as designed. They are not bad code, incompetence of a few coders, bad planning what you can do, but fundamentally wrong strategy, misunderstanding what the franchise is, the attempt to turn it into something that cannot work with the franchise and planning from the very core by the publisher and game designers.
So yes, I do say Sim City 4 fully counts and EA/Maxis screwed up much more and on a much deeper level than parent is giving them credit for.
Re: (Score:2)
Were you going for a "shame there wasn't a 4th" joke there? (SimCity 4 [wikipedia.org] is a different game from this year's version [wikipedia.org].)
Re: (Score:1)
Pedantry point: SimCity 4 was previous in the series released in 2003, this one is called just "SimCity".
Non-pedantry point: despite all this shit and all the negative opinions on the Internet, it sold 2 million copies - just like SimCity 4 or Civilization III. Or 200k copies more than Quake or half a million more than Duke Nukem 3D or twice as many as BioShock.
That's the thing, people keep lapping it up, so calling it "mishap" doesn't really cut it when it keeps printing money.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of interest: A group interview with the developers of SimCity months before the release date [reddit.com]. They were told by thousands of people that DRM was a no-go.
Nokia (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not that many, it seems. I already got that comment modded "troll" and "flamebait".
I just wish those modders would have instead had the honesty to explain how in their views the destruction of Nokia's mobile business, from #1 smartphone and phone builder in the world with over 50% of the market in the beginning of 2011 to the current pitiful state, with a global share in the single digits and forced to sell their mobile division to Microsoft, is anything but a disaster.
I am not writing about Microsoft and
Website makeover (Score:5, Insightful)
Without a doubt, the biggest tech failure of the year is slashdot's new mobile site, and the horendous beta desktop site. I can't imagine the motivation behind the flashy, slow, non-functional mess. If classic.slashdot.org ever goes away, so too will I.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
I can only recommend: pixelcity.com/s
In that way should be slashdot!! Clean, fast... Just text.
NOTE: I got to know about this from another slashdot post long ago :)
Re: (Score:2)
Except that's just a striped down front page. Managing the horde of comments is the challenging part, and they made no attempt to do so.
Wish it was just that (Score:2)
Page source = 128KB.
ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v of page yields 16KB.
Is that other 112KB of CSS really necessary?
Re: (Score:2)
Without a doubt, the biggest tech failure of the year is slashdot's new mobile site, and the horendous beta desktop site. I can't imagine the motivation behind the flashy, slow, non-functional mess. If classic.slashdot.org ever goes away, so too will I.
Word.
Re: (Score:1)
Ya, get rid of the ugly, round-cornered green rectangles, and instead use nice crisp, proper ones, just like a 7th grader in a novice programming class might.
Design a product, gentlemen [amazon.com]. Quit screwing with stuff for the sake of screwing with it.
iOS 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple basically threw away everything that made iOS look approachable and polished.
Re:iOS 7 (Score:4, Interesting)
My girlfriend wanted an iPad Air for xmas, and when I suggested a Nexus 7 she thought I was just being cheap... So I got her one. I'm not that familiar with iOS or previous iPads but it was pretty disappointing out of the box.
The box itself has the iPad, a USB charger and a cable. That's it. Not even headphones or a cleaning cloth or a stand or something. Turning the iPad on the first thing you see is a white screen that shows up how uneven the backlight is at the edges of the screen perfectly. The set up process is rather long... She set it to Chinese so I couldn't read all of it, but considering she already had an Apple account for her iPhone 4 I would have expected a single log-in to be pretty much all that was required. It seems to duplicate a lot of questions too, like asking you for interface language, then keyboards, then location... on a device with GPS, wifi and mobile network access.
Once you get into the main OS it is slick enough, as smooth as my Nexus 5. None of her apps were installed though, she had to do that manually. That seems to be the way of iOS: it makes you work, do everything manually. For example, when you install an app it just dumps the icon on the home screen in the order you installed it. There isn't an app tray, no alphabetical list. You have to organize all apps yourself, sort and categorize them. No widgets, so you have to open an app to get some tiny bit of information. The notification area only has basic controls so most notifications require opening an app too. When you want to move data from app to app there is no simple sharing mechanism, it's a save/switch/load or copy/switch/paste operation.
The UI is inconsistent too. Maybe this is an iOS7 thing, I don't know. For example, there is no back button, so backing out or cancelling things is handled differently by each app. In some apps it isn't even obvious what is a button and what isn't, which is an issue for Android as well but at least you can always just hit back if you don't want to do something.
I suppose it's okay as a tablet. You can learn to use it. Not having used iOS extensively I assumed most of the issues I knew about were geek things that normal people didn't care about, but actually a lot of it is basic usability issues. I guess with all the hype I was surprised, I expected more. Definitely expected more for the money.
Re: (Score:3)
I just wanted to offer some explanations for some of what you're talking about. I'm not really setting out to defend it, just explain it, since I agree with many of your observations.
I know the iPhones come with a cleaning cloth and headphones with an in-line mic for use on calls. I'd assume the iPad comes with a cleaning cloth as well, likely tucked away in the back of one of the packages included in the box just like it is with the iPhones (I seem to recall it being folded neatly in the back of the packag
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the clarifications. It's interesting what you say about iCloud backups. I could tell she was getting frustrated with all the questions and just wanted to use the thing, so perhaps she never activated it. It did import get contracts though.
Having said that, surely you don't need to back your apps up. On Android when you log in they obviously have a list of what apps you bought or installed so the Play app just downloads the compatible ones for your new device.
The main impression I got is that the
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, iCloud backups don't literally backup your apps, though you can "restore" your apps from an iCloud backup, since the backups effectively just contain a pointer to the app in the App Store. Same sort of thing you're talking about with Android, in essence.
The home button is definitely used a lot. It's just one of those differences with Android.
Regarding Lightning-based peripherals, you can buy with confidence so long as they are officially licensed products, which you can tell, because they are marked a
...and the winner is: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say RSA specifically. It has been revealed that the NSA paid them for a backdoor and that they recommended insecure algorithms to customers. Their core business was undermined and shown to be flawed... It's hard to imagine how any company could survive that, although somehow they have.
At least all the other companies were attacked by the NSA, and didn't just open the door for them. At least, as far as we know.
International Space Station (Score:2)
Well, ISS weighs around 400 tons, a bit more now. One of it's coolant pumps spontaneously developed undocumented features recently, and the crew mounted a fix up mission with somewhat makeshift EVA suits and other merryness right around the time when everyone was stuffing their faces around christmas tables.
So if we are talking about big mishaps, thats pretty big, coming in at 400 tons and whizzing about at 7km/s overhead. Fortunately, the fix worked.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually come to think of it, Proton faceplanting spectacularly at Baikonur might be a bit bigger, in terms of explosive power
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2013/07/01/spectacular-video-of-russian-proton-failure/ [parabolicarc.com]
The Year No One Learned From Mistakes (Score:5, Insightful)
2013 is notable for being the year the technology industry did not learn from its mistakes. There's no one single worst mistake. It's like the year Time magazine put a mirror on the cover - the entire industry is to blame!
Windows 8. Gnome 3. Unity. iOS 7. What is the lesson? Users do not want gratuitous change that destroys workflow patterns and muscle memory, and yet technology companies keep cramming them down our throats. In 2013, Windows 8.1 came out and it was just more of the same. iOS 7 destroyed everything we knew about Apple's "it just works" usability, and threw in a snow-blindness photo browser with a white background just to put salt in the wounds. The only thing we can look forward to is more change for the sake of change.
Healthcare.gov is just a symptom of a dysfunctional system of outsourcing to contractors who skim their money off the top, and then hire technology experts with whatever is left, insuring any technology project is going to fail. No one seems to care about quality. That's why software projects fail. Until structural changes are made in how technology is created, nothing will change.
Lessons were there to be learned from, but in 2013, forget it - no one cared.
Blackberry 10 (Score:2, Interesting)
I have the Z10. I don't play games. The phone was built around communication. E-mail, face book, phone calls, BBM. I feel sorry for anyone that chooses Android or iOS over a new Z10 or Z30 if they use it primarily for communications.
There are less games/apps but I can do everything I want to do with it. There are enough games to keep me entertained. And with the exception of no Netflix, it does everything most would want. Thing is, you can install Android apps on the phone and support for that impro
Re: (Score:2)
The problems with this platform all stem from marketing and distribution channel issues, which I hope they can find a way to fix. The product itself is quite solid, and continually improving. Its just that its still having to fight against a product image of what the company was selling 3 years ago, and they're not meeting that challenge as directly as they need to be.
ObamaCare website (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether you agree w/ the Affordable Care Act or not, it is legally required that everybody have insurance. When you've got a government mandate to use a website* and that website doesn't work, that's a pretty big problem.
* Yes, I am aware there are other ways to sign up. But a) have you ever had to wait for service at any office run by the government? and b) isn't this 2013? almost 2014?
Fukushima (Score:4, Interesting)
The disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant continues to be mismanaged. Incompetence and corruption abound and give a giant black eye to nuclear power in general.
healthcare.gov is a great example of corruption in government contracts and the cost of rolling out something that isn't done. Maybe nerds around the world will now have another line for over-eager managers: "Do you want another healthcare.gov?"
- Jasen.
Re:Windows 8.1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Windows 8.1 (Score:4, Interesting)
If you set it up to use the same background as on the desktop the transition is less disturbing. After tweaking the location of the little squares I find it usable, although not an improvement. I set a few updating columns to left, then a couple of columns of static icons related to different tasks and now along with the win+q (which doesn't open the whole modern UI anymore) can find/open stuff pretty quickly.
I still dislike the way right button is handled in the modern UI. Give me my context menus back. Unnecessary useless movements are unnecessary.
Re: (Score:2)
I have noticed that when you buy a new laptop here (Japan) most shops offer to either pre-install or sell you software to bring the start menu back.
To be fair to MS they did listen. I was surprised when they brought the start button back and allowed booting directly to the desktop. The start button fixes the biggest UI problem with Windows 8, which is that it wasn't obvious how to get back to the start screen. Okay, it's not exactly what people wanted, but it's not as offensively bad as the original impleme
Re: (Score:2)
Then in Win8, their metrics said no one was using the start menu, so they removed it. Facepalm.
Re: (Score:1)