Re: Disrupting the business model of sites that you value
Since that'd be a government web site (the only one you'd have to use to do tax returns...) then that probably doesn't matter, as they have everything they'd need from their local intelligence agency (NSA, GCHQ, whoever it is).
Ha, telling the taxman "no I don't need to do a tax return, <insert relevant spook id> can give you all the information you need" is going to result in what ? In the UK, automatic penalties which ramp up in severity and generally a whole lot of pain. It'll also give them an excuse to "open an enquiry" into your affairs, and once they've done that then they can take a fine tooth comb through your finances for quite a few previous years - and if they accuse you of deliberately misrepresenting what tax you need to pay, then that fine tooth comb can, (AIUI) go back decades.
You can, for most individuals at the moment, still file on paper - but that needs you to do it a lot earlier, and they are slowly closing the bounds of who can still use paper, with them wanting to get to a state where anyone involved in a business at all has to file online and quarterly !
in which case you'd be using your employers computer with your employers standard image on it, right?
Wrong. Looking back, going back to pre-internet (at least, outside of academia) days, I've rarely been using an employers computer. And for quite a while and at least the last two jobs, I've been using my own laptop - maybe a bit of "more fool me for using my own when employer should provide it", but at least I get to use MY choice of computer rather than suffering another breakdown being forced to use something that just drives me nuts.
At my last job, I once had a colleague look up and say something like "you're doing your timesheet aren't you ?" He based his correct guess on the basis of the "colourful language" coming from my direction - the web application was an abomination written in house, and which forced me to fire up a VM as it only worked with Windows and Exploder 6. I did once suggest to the head dev that such constraints were perhaps a bit restrictive - his response was that all the customers used Windows and Exploder, so there was no need to support anything else. It was "interesting" watching from the sidelines as customers started complaining ;-) As an aside to that, another dev, just before he left for somewhere better, fixed the problem that made it Exploder 6 only - it was just a case of adding or removing a ";" A nice leaving present from him to the rest of us !
There are ways and means, it just depends on how far you are willing to go before you personally evaluate the trade-offs and effort involved whether it is worth it or not.
And in the most part, those options you suggest are getting way beyond what most of us (and certainly the majority of users) are prepared to do.
So yes, I stand by my suggestion that "if you don't like, just don't use that site" just isn't practical for all sites. Where the bar sits does depend very much on your level of paranoia and your technical abilities - but it's still there for most users.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
