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Japanese Government Requires Java and Internet Explorer 11 X86
Long time reader AmiMoJo writes: Japan has introduced "My Number", a social security number assigned to citizens and used to access government services. Unfortunately, the My Number management web portal requires the Java plug-in. Because this plug-in is deprecated in many browsers, only Internet Explorer 11 (32 bit) and Safari on Mac are supported. The explanation (translated) given for this is that in order to access My Number contactless card readers Java is the only option. Some browsers support IC card access but it seems that it is not mature enough to be viable.
They have a lot of paper and are pretty useless with computers. Usually the opposite from what you see in the news about Japan. They aren't that of an advanced nation if you look at the common man. So this shouldn't be a surprise. It's good that they're trying to automate some stuff but it will take some time and they will make some mistakes. Even dumb mistakes like this one.
South Korea mandated the use of an ActiveX control for online payments in the 1990s, which has locked companies and banks there into a deprecated and dangerous technology. Only in the last couple of years has the government there started the process of getting rid of the damn POS system.
Someone please tell the Japanese government that what they are doing is a REALLY bad idea.
Oh, you'd be surprised. I've worked many places that consider employee time to be "free". We can buy a library that will solve problem X or just build it ourselves. The library costs money, but building it ourselves is free! After all, we're paying our programmers anyway!
That's a more complicated question, because it's not just about staff time spending vs. license fees. When you build dependencies on a closed source library into your work that's an act of faith in the vendor's future support policies. Once I had a vendor who raised the distribution fees on downstream licensees from $5/seat to $1000/seat. Oh, and don't forget the vendors who simply abandon products that aren't making money and leave their customers dangling.
Even if you don't buy into the ideology of Free/Libre software, the risk of being tied to a vendor's future goodwill is a sufficient reason never to buy proprietary libraries. If you do buy a proprietary library you need to protect yourself both contractually (if possible) and architecturally.
Now as for using "free" staff time, at the risk of sounding like I'm contradicting myself, intelligent and creative use of slack developer time is one of the most important things you can do for your long-term success. Far from treating slack time as "free", however, I see it as treating slack time as too valuable to squander. You should set aside time to do things purely for extending the capabilities of the team. That might involve reinventing the wheel, if you have good reason to believe you can make a better one.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Mostly because there have been so many security holes found in java plugins that no other browsers even support it any more. Even Oracle doesn't think it's a good idea these days. Fee free to contemplate the irony of using the java plugin for a security application.