End-to-end encryption is a great idea, but technical people need to make this as simple and idiot proof as possible to maximize adoption. Let me repeat that: it needs to be simple and idiot proof. I know it's popular around here to accuse everyone in the world of being a drooling dolt, especially where technical matters are concerned, but the fact is, people are busy living their lives, working hard, spending time with their family, etc., and have little time left over for technical geekery. A ten page guide that walks you through all kinds of technical jargon and details is not going to cut the mustard. It must be nearly "click, click, click, done" simple.

https is broken by design: it trusts anything the root CAs trust, and you can be sure most or all the CAs around the world are in bed with all the big intelligence agencies.

Yeah, good call there, Alomex. Java's been a real failure and programming languages like Haskell have taken off like a rocket.

<rolls eyes>

Eventually, you'll know why some people might choose the larger but lower spec iPad 2 over the iPad mini.

You'll also learn why people like the zoom button on browsers, why people like smartphones with large screens, etc.

Everyone figures it out eventually...

I would trust the NSA's security guys to get security better than any for-profit company with strong economic incentive to cut corners.

And I realize I'd be handing the NSA the keys to get inside my network -- that's the trade-off I think many people would find worthwhile -- giving the NSA access in exchange for them writing the most secure firmware they possibly could.

I know this is going to sound mighty odd, but hear me out...

I kind of wish the NSA sold things like consumer routers, for which they wrote all the firmware, user interface, etc.

The NSA employs Really Ridiculously Smart People, so then I could count on my router being really, really secure against everyone and everything... except the NSA.

Which would be an OK trade-off for me, and I think would be an OK trade-off for a lot of people...

This is just nonsense, and to see it constantly repeated and modded up is just sad.

C is only simple in the same way a written alphabet with only two letters is simple: sure, you only have to remember the letters A and B (simple!), but actually using it is not simple.

For crying out loud, in C, you can't even do A = B + C; without having a very good chance of invoking undefined behavior. Why? Because in C, overflow or underflow on signed values has undefined behavior!

Access beyond the end of an array and damage data elsewhere in the system (making it often really hard to find)? No problem!

Laboriously managing your own memory (and probably leaking it)? No problem!

What, real strings? Heck no, real men like to take the risk of overflowing the strings and their buffers!

C is filled with literally hundreds of mine fields just waiting to trap the unwary, and often forces you to write a lot of code that would only be a few lines in a higher level language.

C is not simple to use. C is not simple to use.

Oh, I agree, I'm just saying that it's become harder to invent new things (in software). It was much easier in 1979 (which is, coincidentally, the first year I started writing code).

I'm not sure that's a fair question. Early on, software developers had lots of low hanging fruit to pick, and even though it was low hanging, much of it was world-changing.

There are now much fewer opportunities to create world-changing software and it's harder to develop modern software due to higher expectations from users.

As much as I love my iPad, I do entirely agree with you here.

iOS and Android should ship with development tools capable of writing first class software for the platform. It would be a huge competitive advantage, open up software development to a huge number of people, and result in users having a lot more great software in general.

The biggest difference between then and now is that users now demand software that is much more featured and sophisticated. One or two guys could write software that changed the world in 1979 because back then software was so much more simple.

I consider this a very sad state of affairs for iOS and Android. I'll consider them "grown up" when you can write first class software for them using the devices themselves.

This is both true and not true... Windows does not ship by default with the development tools necessary to write first class software. You have to put in some nontrivial work locating, researching, downloading, installing, and learning different development tools before you can write something useful.

Nope, not at all.

I think Java found a pretty good balance in terms of brevity vs. verbosity. Most software development is maintenance, so what you really want is readability. Brevity vs. verbosity is a foolish debate that misses the point.

But it's all subjective, to each his own. Unfortunately, many people want to turn it into some kind of religious debate and hate hate hate the infidels and love love love the true believers.

Whatever.

Ha, that's what the mainframe generation used to say about those upstart IBM PCs.

The good news is that Java code is relatively easy to untangle. Thanks to the design of the Java language, it's very easy to navigate and refactor code using modern IDEs like NetBeans, Eclipse, and IDEA.