Viewing profile — rickmb

That chart is utterly misleading. There is no such thing as an EU-wide law. Most EU countries have much more extensive consumer protection. The only real difference is that with Ap…

Although they are absolutely right, it should also be said that Apple is far from unique. Many electronics shops and manufactures have warranty policies and try to sell extra warra…

Sometimes it takes a shock for people to reconsider their position, especially if what they're really doing is defending their own lack of action. Let's not run to judge the people…

Those waters were murky from the beginning. Always have been, always will be. Also, "illegal" is not a constant, often arbitrary and usually serves only the interests of those that…

Not signing up for a service that wants significant OAuth access to my Twitter (or any other) account without giving me neither a reason nor an alternative.

If it wasn't for the conversation here on HN, I would have assumed the whole site was just a referral-scam. Not just a paywall, but a scam, since there is zero warning upfront unti…

And people wonder why serious PHP developers (yes, those exist) avoid Smarty like the plague...

favicon is only forgotten by those that never check their logs. (Which should be part of the checklist, check your friggin' logs instead of assuming you never miss anything.)

It is definitely optional: http://www.freenews.fr/spip.php?article12949 (even with my limited French I find the original text less confusing than google translate, ). But yes, the …

Alarmist bullshit headline. From what I can figure out, this ISP merely provides a modem/router with a built-in optional adblocker. I don't see anything wrong with that in particul…

However, most clients will only agree to pay for building what they need after you've first built what the want. Very few businesses are interested in getting paid once if they can…

Great tip. I couldn't find it through D&B's own website (the search result found our companies but only tried to sell me shit), but apparently we have DUNS numbers without ever app…

I stopped using Dzone ages ago. It has become a mixture of spam and dangerously stupid disinformation. It's being heavily gamed and the owners don't care.

At least those bother to acknowledge their customers, even if their response is wrong. At least it gives you a chance to fight back. Google simply utterly ignores any kind of compl…

I wonder if Google's malware warnings have ever been reviewed by lawyers. Because this entire feature smells like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

By describing the cultural differences within the US as "vastly different", you are basically just confirming the idea of Americans not understanding the depth of cultural diversit…

Just to be sure I checked Amazon before writing my "pro piracy" rant elsewhere. It's a) not available in my country, and b) between any specific mp3 offering and telling me the usu…

And this once again is why I still prefer to "pirate" music. Most "legal" services are either very vague about format, quality and DRM, not available in my country and/or have a li…

What's worse, were it gets specific on country and regulation, it still gets it wrong, seemingly deliberate. It's a political anti-regulation rant. Nothing more.

So how did entrepreneurs like Sarkozy and Berlusconi ever get elected? Get off it. Entrepreneurs aren't worshiped like gods by default just for being entrepreneurs, that's all.

What strikes me about this article is the utter lack of understanding . It is a highly subjective, very politicized and ideologically tainted description without any kind of unders…

Somewhat different context. The Netherlands has privatized the postal service ages ago. The interest in artificially propping up what remains of this relic beyond the current monop…

Shouldn't the US Postal Service have died a long time ago? It always amazes me how the US as self-proclaimed champions of the free market and technological progress still holds on …

I don't believe Google is any better. The confrontational way Google treats countries that actually try to protect their citizens rights and privacy against Google's invasive pract…

When everything is idling, my Skype client in OSX is almost always on top. It just seems to steadily eat CPU, not all that much, but all the damn time. I've learned to shut it down…