>he managed to download Clash of Clans through a Google Play account, enter his own children's bank card details and buy lots of in-game items.

Wait, why the fuck does a 12 year old child have a bank card?

Why not? How else are they going to learn how to handle money? Or do you believe children should receive every adult responsibility all at once on their 18th birthday?

Sadly these app publishers take advantage while these kids are still learning. The boy probably would never have spent £700 on the game if that had to be spent upfront. "Microtransactions" in games can't die soon enough.

> Why not? How else are they going to learn how to handle money?

Cash? You don't need a debit/credit card to pay for things. You can buy iTunes/Google gift cards with cash if you want funds for your account.

I don't know elsewhere, but here (Italy) it is common enough (and highly recommended) that online "rechargeable" bank cards are used.

I don't see why one cannot give one to a kid with - say - 100 Euro initial credit on it, and let him/her do whatever he/she wants with the money.

Then manage it the same way as it was once with the (usually here weekly) "allowance", crediting on it something weekly or monthly.

I'll confess that my weekly allowance as a kid was 5.000 lire, i.e. roughly 2.5 Euro, which should say something on both my age and the effects of inflation ...

Quote on that?

Also, there's Wine and ReactOS, no? Aren't those two alternative (even if somewhat incomplete) implementations of Win32?

See "The Solution", where he argues for Win32 as a truly open standard, as explicitly opposed to UWP and Android, which he considers to be closed.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/04/microsoft...

He never call Win32 an "open standard." He calls it an open platform, or open experience, which he means anyone can build win32 games and distribute them on their own.

Using the word "standard", which he never does in that article, is quite misleading.

I don't think it's worthwhile to split hairs over standard/platform; I've heard Win32 called both, many times, by respectable sources.

As it is, he argued that Win32 is more open than UWP or Android; regardless of whether you think the API is a standard or a platform.

His statement is definitively true on the software distribution side. Google wants every App installed via play store and now even Microsoft Office is only available there. Classical Windows on the other hand allows Chrome to be installed without MS acting as gatekeeper.

Yes, it's not totally black and white. Android does kinda allow side-loading with shitty usability. MS did start its own store and lets not get into telemetry. Classical windows still gives the user a lot of control, though.

I would not claim that any of Android, UWP, _or_ Win32 are open.

They do share a lot of code, though; so there's really more like 1.2 alternate implementations of win32.

They may be alternative implementations, but they're still no good in this case. See elsewhere in the thread where it's pointed out that Epic's anti-cheat software intentionally fails to run the game if it's running on Wine.

Those are reverse engineer not blessed by Micrsoft's nor it is win32 an open standard

Further if the Oracle v Google suit does not get overturned MS could put an end to both Wine and ReactOS in a heartbeat

Exactly. Reminds me of panhandlers who ask for money to buy food. But if you give them food they refuse to take it. Yeah, right...

You can actually vet a charity unlike a panhandler.

You might even be able to volunteer for them yourself for a few weekends and gain trust in them before setting up a scheduled cash donation, if you really want to verify it.

The word "racism" does not mean what you think it means.

You are completely right. "regime" has clear bad connotations.

Gizmodo is a left-wing outlet so this kind of snark is to be expected.

I like btrfs. It's made subvolumes (/ and /home) and snapshots (which I religiously take before any major updates) ridiculously easy.

You might really enjoy Solaris's boot environments, then ;-)