Whilst I agree with all of the above, I think the *real* takeaway from this should be "don't use shitty websites like Formspring, for fuck's sake."

No, no, no. You got it all wrong. Apple comes up with a space-age idea like multi-touch, waits for somebody intelligent to invent it and THEN claims it as their own and sues the little upstart back into the stone age. The mistake everybody makes is that just because somebody else actually put the pieces together and did the hard work doesn't mean they invented it. To invent something, you have to think about it and then patent the thought you had with some rough scribbles on a napkin. I've actually invented and patented hovercars. I'm just waiting for somebody else to make them so that I can sue them.

It's kind of brilliant. Y'know, in a total bastard kind of way.

That and the fact that Apple doesn't give a shit about their desktop market. The fact that they're turning £2,000 laptops and PCs into oversized iOS devices is testament to this. As soon as they started raking in obscene amounts of money for handhelds (iPods, iPhones and iPads) they left their desktop products to fester and morph into an unsightly extension of their iOS division.

Apple's corporate culture seems to favour aggressive psychopaths more than any other, we all know what a lunatic Jobs could be and Cook seems to be little different. There are times now where I long for the days of Ballmer dancing around like a chimp, at least we got a cheap laugh out of his chemically imbalanced grey matter.

Yeah. Impressive to spend years and $$$ to achieve an overly complex version of something that can be achieved by wearing your (polarised) sunglasses. Added bonus: you don't need to buy a new car.

By that logic, why do we need to legislate against murder, rape, theft, assault etc? They're all morally wrong, so why should people do it? Do we really need government dictating that I can't kill a guy because he makes idiotic counterarguments on Slashdot?

So to sum up, why do people take advantage if they can? Because there is an advantage to be gained.

And as for that sarcastic diatribe about 'innocent' bankers... dude, I didn't say they were innocent. In fact, I explicitly stated that they were not blameless. The issue is not binary, there is no absolute wrong and absolute right. You need to get your head out of your ass and realise that reality is not that simple.

I'm not sure what moronic logic you followed to reach that brilliantly asinine conclusion, but in answer to your question: 'no.' How could less regulation possibly solve a problem of not enough regulation?

Just because you don't trust them doesn't mean that they are entirely to blame.

Or are we sweeping the rampant profligacy of governments over the past 20 years under the carpets because it doesn't gel well with this hang-a-banker sentiment?

If you want to blame everything on a bunch of guys who were acting inside the rules and regulations they were told to abide by, that's fine. But the real damage was done by incompetent legislators and regulators who failed to pay attention and adequately oversee the industry they were charged with.

And that's not even touching the mass market of morons who thought there was nothing intellectually challenged about taking on a mortgage several times their salary to pay for a house and then several credit cards to pay for all the amenities that were far beyond their modest means. It cuts both ways. Banks and the financial industry are by no means blameless, but the argument that they are entirely to blame for the world's current economic woes is not only specious, but a blatant scapegoat that the uninformed masses have been happy to bleat about for long enough now.

I think the current recession proves that it is misguided to think it is all down to one sector of the economy.

Possibly one of the best posts I've read on Slashdot. Real life is the place all those cool ideas you have as a kid come to die.

I'd have loved to work for Google or Apple 5 years ago. Sadly, along with the rest of the industry, they couldn't pay me anything like what I value my time as being worth.

On the basis that the site in question aren't solicitors, or any other form of professionals that bill on a time basis, I find this to be irrelevant. They make money on selling items, their customers are not paying for a service, they are paying for a product. Hopefully this idiocy will prove to be wholly deleterious and they'll get hammered for it.

By Ruslan Kogan's own admission, a mere 3% of his customers use IE7. If he's so wound up about how much time he's spending on that 3% then either he should be a businessman and just stop wasting time on it or stop being such a whiny bitch looking for free advertising by proxy.

If the customers in that 3% actually WARRANT the added work to support them, then this highwayman 6.8% tax wouldn't be considered because their commercial value covers the extra work.

Bottom line, the guy's a moron flogging a frankly stupid idea that is utterly indefensible from a philosophical standpoint and a total non-issue from a business standpoint.

Charging for extra for delivery is nothing the same. That's like saying I can purchase my Amazon basked for £10 cheaper if I collect it myself.

Fragmented web standards are nothing new either, suck it up and roll with it. I don't bill my clients a higher rate just because a new law came into force that makes my industry more complicated - what makes some script kiddy with a copy of Dreamweaver and a PDF W3C certificate so goddamn special?

Economic encouragement is fine if there is a clearly defined greater good that people can sympathise with, for example tax breaks for people who drive hybrid cars as they are reducing environmental damage or subsidies for people who install solar panels on their homes. Economic coercion into using a certain web browser because it helps a few weirdy beardies get their ducks in a row is dead in the fucking water. The universal answer will be "it's your job to design a website that works, suck it up."

The next logical step then is to charge disabled users more, because it costs more to implement more disability accessible websites. This is the point I'm trying to push people towards...

So what implications does this have for proprietary mobile browsers? Companies can suddenly decide, 'fuck it, I'll just charge them more for not using my browser of choice'?

Whilst nobody cares about IE7, the wider implications of this are potentially pretty onerous.

Mod parent up. Freaking hilarious.