What is wrong with Apple?

Apple make easy things very very hard

Sharing photos is easy with google

If I want to share my photos with someone who has a google account, I just name them in the share dialog, and then they can see my photos, via their own google account from any web browser.

Or if they don't have a google account, I can share the "link" to the album so that any one who has the hard-to-guess link can see my photos.

Anyone with a vaguely modern web browser.

That's all that's needed for 21st century communication.

But not with Apple

A family member uses an ipad and wants to share photos with me from her "photo stream".

So they send me an invitation to subscribe to their  photostream.

Luckily I have an icloud account from when I tried to use itunes to buy music (that's another story).

And I click on the link, to be greeted with:

To subscribe to ... photo stream on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Mac, open your invitation in the Mail app and click the Subscribe button in the message.

To subscribe you need to be signed in to iCloud on:

• an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 6 or later or
• a Mac with macOS 10.8.2 or later and iPhoto 9.4 or Aperture 3.4 or later

I actually need to possess an apple device to view some photographs that someone has taken using their apple device!

I get my paws on an apple device

I manage to lay my hands on a MacBook Air. I give it all the updates. It's running Lion, the latest release of MacOS that it can run.

I install iCloud.

Do you want to guess if I can subscribe to the photostream?

I can't -- I need iPhoto 9. Free upgrades to iPhoto 9.4 are available if I have iPhoto 9, but I don't. It has iPhoto 8.

I can't buy iPhoto 9 from the Apple app store because it has been discontinued.

Apple won't let me pay them the money that they are extorting from me because... it isn't enough.

I track down iPhoto 9

I find that I can get iPhoto 9 if I buy a CDROM containing iLife 11. (iLife 11 has also been discontinued from the app store).

iLife 11 typically sells for $50 or £50 on Amazon, but I track down a copy for around £20 on ebay.

I'm not confident, and neither is my wife.

And then I notice, iPhoto 9 could possibly not be enough.

The small print in the email says: with macOS 10.8.2 or later
and I only have macOS 10.6.6 (Lion) and this MacBook Air  won't take a newer version.

So now I'm an apple user (with this MacBook Air I got hold of) and I still can't view the photostream. I need to shell out a few hundred pounds to but a newer macbook or ipad.

But iCloud is available for Windows.

iCloud for Windows

I install iCloud for windows.

It doesn't work.

After logging in (authenticating me successfully against the apple authentication servers) it then declares that I am not connected to the internet. c_a_murphy4 comments:

I hope you receive more professional support than I did. Their senior team took more than a week with this issue and then blamed Microsoft (in a rather backhand way by saying there was nothing more they could do from an Apple standpoint). I called up Microsoft, and they in turn blamed Apple. If you ever do find a solution to this problem, please let me know. Apple and Microsoft just aren't coming through with the goods - at least not for me.

Some people seem to suggest that it is only the windows 10 anniversary edition that has this problem. Well I'm not downgrading.

Windows 7

So I try again on an old windows 7 laptop and get exactly the same problem.

I suppose I can blame Apple that now it's not just windows 10 but apparently no version of windows can run the latest version of their software, and it's not there fault.

Taking advice, I downgrade to the previous version of iCloud for windows.

This time  get the Error occurred during authentication error.

So I try the previous version of iCloud for windows.

Surely one point Apple have managed to produce working software for windows? And it works.

But no photostream

Now iCloud works but isn't any use. The photostream subscription has to be accepted as describe in the sucks-be-to-you message I had when I originally tried to subscribe from an unclean non-apple system:

a Mac with macOS 10.8.2 or later and iPhoto 9.4 or Aperture 3.4 or later

So I lookup virtual mac machines in the cloud. I could pay a few dollars an hour and perhaps get it working. Or pay $20 a month with the first day free and then cancel right away.

Via a friend, I get long distance access to a mac, with all the right software, and the photostream subscription is accepted.

Back to windows

Now the photostream subscription is accepted I can begin to download it on the windows 7 PC and then use google photo uploader to sync that folder to a photo album.

Back to google

And so now I can share the google photo album with other non-apple family members.

But this is normal for Apple

They break your stuff on purpose

If a you sacrifice at the wrong altar and have a non-Apple vendor repair your phone, Apple prevent your phone from working.

If you jailbreak your phone so that you can install software that you didn't pay Apple for, they will brick your phone on the next firmware update.

I showed here how an Apple user with a MacBook Air is prevented from subscribing to the photostream of another Apple user, because they didn't sacrifice recently enough at the Apple altar.

But Apple made a mistake 

Their new much-cursed top-of-the-range laptop that is missing a load of ports -- no HDMI, no USB2, no sdcard, etc

Now some independent developers funded by kickstarter have put together The HyperDrive.

It’s a $100 dongle that slips neatly into both USB Type-C slots to give you a whole lot more connectivity. Not only do you get your two USB Type-C ports back, but you gain a couple of USB 3.1 ports; a microSD and SD slot; and an HDMI video port.

Did you notice? "slips neatly into both USB Type-C slots"

Because of a stupid Apple oversight in providing standard USB-C ports users have overcome Apple! How are they going to stop that?

Of course the most annoying thing is that there will have been room inside the case to fit this dongle.

Afraid of perfection

Did you ever know a company so afraid of perfection that they spent so much time and effort deliberately lousing things up for their customers?

Or a bunch of captive customers so suffering from Stockholm Syndrome that they keep paying over much money for such rubbish?

Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon first described in 1973 in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.

And we are not seeing that much lack of abuse.

The FBI's Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly eight percent of victims show evidence of Stockholm syndrome.

And yet Apple market share is quite a bit more than 8%, around 12%.

I wonder, what is the excuse of the other 4%?

Parking Charge Notice

A Parking Charge Notice arrived in the post last week for parking for more than two hours in an empty car park after the shops had closed, near Dewsbury Sports centre; charging £100, reduced to £60 if paid quickly enough that there is no time to think about it.

I thought about it.

First, there are a few flaws with the original notice:

1. It does not properly identify the car park; only a 1 line car park name with no mention of town or county.
2. It states that signage showing the terms and conditions is clearly displayed at the entrance - it was not, or it would have been noticed.
3. That by parking, the driver has agreed to be bound by the terms and conditions - not so! Not being aware of the sign, one could not know that parking there would bind one by the terms and conditions. (Even if one was aware it is still possible to park there without agreeing to the terms and conditions though this might constitute trespass instead of breach of contract).

And then the usual misleading characteristics of such threatening demands, the letter is so designed with the sole narrative of having the reader pay some money now, because the letter tells them to.

The letter states that as the keeper one should identify the driver, and comments here http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/faq/private-parking-penalties/ suggest that one must identify the driver.

The British Parking Association in 2011 lobbied Parliament for a clause in the Protection of Freedoms Bill (Chapter 2, Clause 56) to make vehicle keepers liable for private parking penalties in the same way they can be held liable for road traffic offences and street parking offences if they do not identify the driver of the car at the time of the offence

and

Two comments from Nev Metson who knows more about this issue than anyone else:

...

The Achilles heel in this legislation for the private parking company is that once the registered keeper has named the driver then the registered keeper can no longer be held liable, irrespective of whether or not the private parking company gets it's money or not from the driver.

but their letter does not state how to do this. of course not, they would rather that one just paid.

One might think that you could notify them of the driver by writing to the registered office address in small print at the bottom of page 2. The only large and obvious contact details are for paying. I did this by registered post, thus discharging the only legal liability as I understand it.

And in true cheapskate fashion it asks the reader to do their dirty work for them, stating

If you were not the driver at the time, you should tell us the name and current postal address of the driver and pass this notice to them. 

Well, actually, no, I don't think I have to do your delivery work for you, you can send a notice to the driver yourself. (Which they then did).

The appeals procedure is interesting, but to follow such a procedure would imply that one agreed with the original assertion that one had entered into a contract with them. They can have an appeals procedure if they like, but I don't need to use it.

£100

The size of the claim is interesting.  At http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/faq/private-parking-penalties/ we read:

Unfair Private Parking Penalties

(With thanks to Alan Salsbury)

Ticketed car parking in a car park or on private land is a contract between the car driver and the owner of the land or the company managing paring on the land. If an unfair penalty for parking in an off road car park is imposed by a parking enforcement company due to a breach, often due to circumstances beyond the car owner's control, there is a remedy. (Thinking in particular of the driver who, having purchased a train station parking ticket for two days, arrived back at the car 11 minutes late.)

The law covers this situation adequately with the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 which clearly provides under group 5 para 1(e)** that "Terms may be unfair if they have the object or effect requiring any consumer who fails to fulfil his obligation to pay a disproportionate high sum in compensation". In other words, the company owning or managing the parking space can only charge a penalty which accurately reflects the loss of income they suffered arising from that breach. Insofar as the driver arrived 11 minutes late the penalty, if any, should be the cost of an 11 minute ticket. If there were several other parking spaces available, then no loss was suffered.

"I have quoted this act several times to such organisations and in each case they have cancelled the ticket, albeit without prejudice to future decisions to avoid creating a precedent. It has worked every time. However, anybody thinking of using this law to avoid buying a ticket. beware. You have to purchase a ticket to establish a contract."

(** Amended by Schedule 2 under regulation 5 (5) of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.) 

So what was the actual loss by my parking in an almost empty car park after the shops were closed? Nothing!

I also learn that although the car park is managed by ParkingEye, I do not need to deal with ParkingEye I can deal with the land owner (in the same way that I can deal with BBC instead of TV Licensing).

The driver will be identified (to ParkingEye) and after that I will have fun drawing the other points to them one at a time. I will leave the legal capacity of the actual driver in being able to enter into a contract till the very end. I will post updates on my blog.

A repeat demand addressed the actual driver was received today. The driver has no business relationship with ParkingEye and has elected to ignore the notice.

Big brother's cousin over the seas

..Binney believes that the agency now stores copies of all e-mails transmitted in America... the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can be searched ... in the manner of Google. ... “General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn’t put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the sea.”

The lesson? Beware when those in authority speak in metaphors.

To me the "dictionary selection after the manner of google" is a dragnet, and to most people it's the sort of thing they were worried about, so when an authority denies a specific behaviour by means of a metaphor, try to see what is being hidden and thus perhaps admitted to.

Charges Against the N.S.A.’s Thomas Drake

Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency, faces some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen.

FOIA inquiry ducks FOIA

Freedom of Information Act inquiry ducks FOIA requests • The Register

An academic inquiry which recommended that scientists respond more honestly to FOIA requests has found a creative way to evade FOIA requests.

Are we the genie in the bottle?

I've heard that a genie should be sure to give you what you ask for but never what you want. This is what "incentives" and "targets" do. Someone else's slashdot comment follows:

    If you reward students for high grades in exams, you'll get just that. High grades. Not understanding of the subject, just high grades. If you reward bankers for making profits, you'll get just that. High profits. Not financial stability, just high profits.

    The problem with incentives is that exceedingly few people are capable of setting them correctly.

I wonder if an incentive for correct incentive setting would fix things or make the problem worse...

A well known quote from Thomas S. Monson is: "When performance is measured, performance is improved. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of performance accelerates"

However the less quoted statement that prefixed that is: "When we deal in generalities, we shall never succeed. When we deal in specifics, we shall rarely have a failure."

(http://education.byu.edu/ncate/)

And the problem is with targets that are general proxy measures of performance. So if you want more unemployed people on training courses, lots of training courses will spring up. If you want shorter waiting lists, people will be made to wait somewhere else.

The need to be specific so the genie has to give what is wanted instead of what was asked for...

Rule by Corporation

International media industries abuse an emergency session of the New Zealand parliament intended to deal with the Christchurch earthquake as a means to support their business by having the NZ government criminalize citizens on behalf of the music industry.

(And if you think your UK vote counts for anything read this).

New Zealand to sneak in Internet disconnection copyright law with Christchurch quake emergency legis

The government of New Zealand is sneaking in its controversial "3-strikes" Internet disconnection law tonight as part of its emergency legislation dealing with the Christchurch earthquke. Bill 92A was passed once before and then rescinded after massive popular demonstrations, letter writing campaign

An 8 minute response in NZ parliament of a green party representative:

beware of mob rule

More reasons to beware of mob-rule - sometimes (some of) the police are part of the mob. Note that others of the police also opposed the mob, were vigilant, alert and challenged the flawed evidence. Lives were still ruined in the effort to save the children.

Operation Ore was based on flawed evidence from the start • The Register

Exclusive Britain’s biggest ever computer crime investigation, Operation Ore, was flawed by a catalogue of “discrepancies, errors and uncertainties”, disclosed reports of two national police conferences seen by The Register reveal.

More background here: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/74690/operation-ore-exposed/2

The case resulted in 33 suicides of those investigated. I don't know if we'll know how many right thinking folk would say deserved it or how many were victims of bad policing. Many accept plea-bargains but may have been innocent.

Stupid tax arguments

"We cannot justify taxing the poorest to pay benefits such as tax credits and child benefit to higher earners”

- why don't you pay the tax credits and child benefit of higher earners out of the tax of the higher earners then? They are paying more tax than the lower-earners after all, so it should be easier to manage...

Or, at least don't make stupid arguments.

750,000 'to pay higher tax rate'

Three-quarters of a million more people are set to become higher rate taxpayers in April, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Passenger cleared by jury after standing up to TSA

Passenger cleared after TSA checkpoint stare-down • The Register

A Seattle man has been acquitted of all charges brought against him when he refused to show ID to TSA officials and videotaped the incident at an airport security checkpoint.

Were there problems with jury selection? This guy was found not-guilty by a jury. I agree, but I am surprised.

An analysis of the trial: http://www.papersplease.org/wp/mocek/

What it means to co-operate with the police

If you know you didn't commit the crime, would you want to submit to DNA screening?

All men in Bristol should be DNA-tested, says MP - Crime, UK - The Independent

DNA samples from every man in Bristol should be screened as police continue to hunt for the murderer of Joanna Yeates, one of the city's MPs has urged.

No - it cannot help you, it can only make things worse for you, it cannot make things better.

The policeman agrees - even if you are innocent and know you are innocent and know you can prove it, speaking up can get you a conviction. Watch the video to see how. (The policeman speak out in part 2).

I will admit to not following his advice many times since having watched it. I recognise the principles, but I also recognise that police who I have had occasion to speak to me have had no or little interest in prolonging the conversation, so my strategy was to avoid changing that. i.e. shut my mouth, listen, and say sorry and thank-you.

In abstract, the lawyers advice is the same, but he explains how often you won't know how to encourage disinterest on the part of the police.

I realised that the OTHER video is missing, the one that shows you the trouble people got into for not talking to the police in cases where you were innocent. We can only speculate what it would contain if it were made.

This guy helped police with DNA and had slight problems. The conversation with the police was funny: http://www.circulartriangle.com/blog/?p=41

Government Techno-magicians

There is not shortage of people who want to believe Pharoah's magicians - or these days, technology salesmen.

Folk who want to believe that they have a magic computer box that will tell them something helpful - but which in fact are generally about as trustworthy as an ouija board or a anonymous internet chat.

A principle at stake, is that the more worthwhile it is to crack something, the more likely it is to be cracked.

Cryptographers crack system for verifying digital images • The Register

Russian password-cracking company ElcomSoft said on Tuesday that it's able to extract the original signing key from the Canon Original Data Security Kit and use it to validate fake photos. Canon has billed the service as a way to verify the originality of an image and to confirm that global positioning coordinates, data, time, and other metadata hasn't been changed.

Body scanners for the trains?

Physic mind probes next, to try and catch the sort of strong principled reactionary who might turn terrorist while on the train as a consequence of something they read in the paper. (Or possibly by the bad service).

Slashdot IT Story | Next Step For US Body Scanners Could Be Trains, Metro Systems

Hugh Pickens writes "The Hill reports that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says terrorists will continue to look for US vulnerabilities, making tighter security standards necessary. '[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through,' Napolitano said

MP's afraid to investigate News of the World?

"something is dangerously out of kilter" when MPs such as Adam Price on the Commons culture, media and sport select committee confess they have been "held back" from probing into News Corporation's affairs because of "fear of what that company might do to them" – or when former employees are "too frightened to speak publicly about what they know" .

Support your possibly independant lobbyists-for-hire; they will harass OFCOM and your MP's for you.

It's worth a fiver from me, and they take paypal. Standing up to be counted (if that's what it is) was never so easy.

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/m/74c05d05/2d442c4a/58ac402e/4674fb5d/2183962099/VEsF/

Rusbridger warns of 'chilling effect' of News Corp's bid for BSkyB | Media | guardian.co.uk

www.guardian.co.uk

Guardian editor-in-chief argues that no individual or organisation should be allowed 'that much power'. By Dan Sabbagh

Citizens can use lobbyists too

http://wiki.openrightsgroup.or​g/wiki/Main_Page

It is re-assuring to know, when reading the details of these campaigns that folk with more time and experience than me are on the case.

I'm a founding member of the open rights group.

ORG Campaigns

The Open Rights Group is a fast-growing NGO focused on raising awareness of issues such as privacy, identity, data protection, access to knowledge and copyright reform.

Privatisation of Politicis

Is the privatisation of politics a good thing?
Is voting still enough?

You can now pick your own pressure groups and lobbyists to "educate" your elected leaders who are too busy to understand all the implications of the subtle plans of the other pressure groups and lobbyists.

You should vote, and you should also consider financially supporting groups who will watch out for your interests and fight for them on your behalf.

It can be easier to pay £5 per month than read all the new legislation and track the debates. And also more effective.

I'm a founding member of the open rights group, and I recommend all my friends to join.

http://www.openrightsgroup.org​/join

Open Rights Group | Join ORG

www.openrightsgroup.org

We really need your support in our fight against threats like Mandelson’s disconnection proposals, Intercept Modernisation and Phorm. We depend on people like you: click here to join us as a supporter today.

This is a stupid campaign. I polluted it by signing the petition with a comment to the effect that I disagreed with it. Only a fool pays taxes that don't need to pay. Osborne even has to pay an accountant to find out what he needs to pay and what he doesn't. The solution is to SIMPLIFY TAX LAW not pay extra tax voluntarily!

We KNOW Osborne pays his tax cos his accountant makes sure. You DON'T know if you pay yours! Simplify taxes! A witch hunt will get you too!

BTW I didn't mean to pollute the campaign with a negative signature, I just couldn't find any other outlet. (I since found their blog page and I posted on that)

38 Degrees | Osborne Pay Your Taxes

www.38degrees.org.uk

‎38 Degrees brings you together with other people to take action on the issues that matter to you and bring about real change.

Stop government snooping on email and Facebook

I'm also a founding member of the Open Rights Group

Stop government snooping on email and Facebook

The government has announced that it will be spending up to £2 billion pounds into new ways to snoop on email and web traffic.

Intelligent machines

Reading The Leakproof Singularity and Simulation we have the quote from 1965 by British statistician IJ Good:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an intelligence explosion, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.

count the some falacies here...

Never mind that the first statement may not actually be possible: "Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever.";

never mind that intelligence may or may not be embodied within machines, we have the questions:

• "an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be..." Would the unltraintelligent machine want to design a better machine? It may think it wiser not to.

• Even if it were so, man might invent another intelligent machine to save himself from the ravages of the first.

• Philosophically, there is a case to argue that man is such an intelligent machine created by the earth, and does she regret it now?

Unintended consequences of over-strict control

See the sad story of over-strict food safety control and see how they back-fire on public health.

http://divisionoflabour.com/archives/004849.php

In summary over-strict requirements for food vendors means that the only food vendors left are lax care-free an possibly severely unhygenic vendors, making it almost impossible to find a safe vendor.