Downgrades as upgrades: Cartons

Over the last few years, I've grown accustomed to a strange phenomenon that has afflicted a once functional and pleasant land - the 'Downgrade as Upgrade'. I've watched in dismay as things that are supposedly new, improved, better, etc, have actually been impaired/restricted/reduced in features or performance. QuickTime has gradually lost the ability to convert between many formats like it used to, and seems increasingly to be just a player for the latest formats. Windows Media Player has lost just about all functionality beyond playing videos and adverts, and it has lost all its menus and usability in the process, but it has certainly gained the ability to stop me playing content that it thinks I shouldn't.

Just about every time I 'upgrade' a piece of software, I know with a heavy heart that this means that DRM will reduce my ability to use it, will further restrict what I can do, that features will vanish never to re-appear, that useful aspects will be twisted so they no longer delight me, and more. Much more. Trying to buy a monitor for my PS3 turned into a long, drawn-out battle trying to find out if an apparently suitable DVI-equipped monitor actually supported HDCP with the right version number. When LCD manufacturers seem determined to not tell you the specifications for their products so that you can check if the PS3 will allow itself to output a picture to the monitor, then I know the world has lost the plot (and any other idiom or euphemism). So how do you put something as big as the Earth in a strait-jacket?

And it isn't just software and hardware. The creeping malaise has spread much wider. Just recently, I've been trying to find a way to pour milk out of milk cartons without it going everywhere. Ten years ago, I remember that milk cartons came with a top not unlike a pitched roof, where you peeled apart the sides, and squeezed, then pulled one of the sides down to make a spout. Quick and simple, and it poured beautifully. Years of advances in science and technology later, and I'm faced with flat-top cartons equipped with tiny plastic widgets on top, where you flick open the tiny cover, peel away a foil cover, and then pour, and the milk proceeds to dribble down the side of the carton. In fact, it flatly refuses to pour properly.

I've asked around. No-one that I've talked to knows how to make them pour properly. Lots of milk gets wasted because you can't pour them properly. If this is such a great invention that it is on all cartons then why doesn't it work?

Why are we stuck with 'Downgrades as upgrades'? If I was cynical I might even suggest that politicians suffer from the same effect...

Hmmm. I seem to have written an article in a style that some people might associate with 'The Register'!