Things That Suck - Part 1

Yes I know, I was supposed to give you the review of Mitsubishi Lancer. Instead, I am starting a new series of posts. But I couldn't help it, I have stuff to share with the world ;). The car reviews will resume shortly, but I would like to give you insights into some stuff that I think is broken in the world, such as:

• getters and setters (yes my friends, they are an abomination to God, for reasons that I will explain in a subsequent post)
  
• class loaders
• headhunters

But first, let me share with you with the recent suckage, caused by the "fuck the customer" policies of a certain vendor of TV tuners, namely Pinnacle Systems.

I don't have a proper TV-set at home, as me and my wife have decided that TV is mostly crap anyway. The only reason to actually watch it is for my kids to be able to see their daily does of Teletubies, so a computer-based low cost, low qualoty solution would be plenty good enough. So some year and a half ago I happened to buy one of Pinnacle's creations - a USB-based analog TV tuner. I have installed its drivers and a crappy TV-viewing application on my laptop, so my kids would be able to watch TV in the kitchen. Yes, the application was crappy, but it is not the reason I am writing this - bare with me. Of course, I have managed to totally misplace the installation CD and the rest of the packaging immediately. Don't you install the drivers from the internet these days? Aren't they supposed to be free?

Anyway - that was a big mistake.

I have upgraded my home PC from the 5-year old, Intel-issued "home PC" Dell, pitifully underpowered by today's standards. That thing had another TV tuner onboard - from some other vendor (they are excellent, so I will not mention them in an article about things that suck. Email me and I will reveal the brand and model). I am now in the process of transferring all of my digital belongings to the new host. Swapping PCI cards was the last thing on my list, buty meanwhile my wife wanted to watch TV ("Miami Ink" was on and she is in love with Chris Garver :)). So I figured - "why not use the USB TV thingy"? Well, you have to install the TV viewing app for that thing first. But where is it? CD is probably long gone (most likely eaten by my one year old son). Let's grab it from the web then! Ok so I managed to download the thing - all of its 300MB! All belonging to a TV viewing app? Whisky Tango Foxtrot? What could be in there? Well, let's install and start the app to find out. But here comes a nasty surpsrise: in order to install the app, you need a "license key", which is sticked to the CD cover! What? Why? The app would only work on this particular Pinnacle's tuner anyway, I have the tuner, why do you want some stupid key from me? To make sure that I am legit? Why on earth would I want to even bother to download this piece of **** application if I am not a legit owner of the hardware? What's the point here?

You know what Pinnacle? Two things:

• you are not the only TV tuner vendor in the world. Other ones are much more customer-friendly and much less likely to piss me off. I won't be buying your stuff anymore. Ever. No way.
  
• Google knows very well where to find your stupid app's registration keys. Of course, I had to submit myself to the awful looks of astalavista's porn banners (thank godness for Adblock - I wonder how this site looks in IE :)), but the keys are about two clicks away. Why do you even bother with this stupid shit?