rickmb

58 ms·

541.
by rickmb 15y ago
"Switzerland's ridiculous privacy laws" You mean those "ridiculous" kind of laws where peoples privacy is protected against media-exploitation during that equally ridiculous "presumption of innocence" bit that is part of due process? Those
542.
by rickmb 15y ago
No, sir. That is a framework you may not be familiar with. There are frameworks specifically designed to be modular, and of which 90% can be used as a library, without being forced to apply it's MVC or scaffolding bits. The line between fra
543.
by rickmb 15y ago
There is a major difference between being fired in the US and for instance most countries in Europe, where workers rights are very strongly protected. In the latter case, it is often very hard, time consuming, painful and costly to fire som
544.
by rickmb 15y ago
The amount of hollow marketing speak in this post suggests it's a rationalization after the fact. Which usually indicates the original criteria was mostly a matter of "ooh, that looks pretty". Not that there's anything wrong with that, but
545.
by rickmb 15y ago
Do I understand correctly that you believe it is okay to refer to a woman as a "bitch" in the workplace (and startups should actively screen for people who feel otherwise)? This is not a rhetorical question, I'm just taking your suggestion
546.
by rickmb 15y ago
Although Mozilla would be quite right to ban someone if this kind of behavior becomes repetitive, I do find these kind of bug reports extremely useful, because they also convey the impact it has on the user. I can easily identify with his
547.
by rickmb 15y ago
And for the next ten years, flawed attempts at imitating this will show up in production code all around the world... I'm not saying he shouldn't have (I've certainly learned something I didn't know), but let's face it, posting this on Stac
548.
by rickmb 15y ago
Odd. PHP still going strong in a relatively PHP-hostile demographic, but none of the major frameworks (Symfony, Zend) that make PHP a viable option, and the presence of Cake in this list seems out of place.
549.
by rickmb 15y ago
The problem of making the defaults transparent has been solved a long time a go. Standard convention for a lot of software is to have one config file (for instance often with the extension .dist) with all the default settings, and lots of c
550.
by rickmb 15y ago
Rewriting something is most definitely a good way to learn that a) rewrites are easy to underestimate, and often not such a good idea as they seem, and b) the previous programmer may not be such an idiot as you first thought. Understanding
551.
by rickmb 15y ago
I'm sorry if you consider it rude, but have you considered the people you're speaking to may have something better to do than to spend their time teaching you Dutch, or alternatively, may just believe you actually want to discuss the subjec
552.
by rickmb 15y ago
This does effectively block the EU from going in the complete opposite direction (as in: explicitly granting ISP's the right to discriminate internet-traffic). It would mean invalidating Dutch net-neutrality law, which is politically virtua
553.
by rickmb 15y ago
Wrong on both counts. First of all, KPN is the largest but by no means the only telco. The only special position they have left is that because they used to be the state telephone monopoly they still own most of the last-mile copper. But th
554.
by rickmb 15y ago
The only barrier you will encounter if you actually want to settle there is dealing with paperwork. Companies and official authorities will gladly help you in English, but the paperwork is in Dutch. People often seem to forget the implicati
555.
by rickmb 15y ago
Typical anecdote in that respect: we have a German and a Greek developer on our team in Amsterdam. They practice Dutch by speaking it to each other, because everyone else will automatically switch to English.
556.
by rickmb 15y ago
Sorry, but the suggestion that fighting for justice is somehow the thing only "irrational people" would choose totally pisses me off. I totally understand someone making a rational decision in favor of other priorities. It's what most peopl
557.
by rickmb 15y ago
Isn't the primary requirement for writing a highly scalable distributed system to have clean and strictly decoupled code? Otherwise scaling becomes a series of rewrites. And in that scenario engineering time may be less expensive than tons
558.
by rickmb 15y ago
Not that I'm disagreeing with you when it comes to being a professional developer, and neither am I equating programming with art, but you've just argued against being an artist and creating art for art's sake. There is nothing inherently w
559.
by rickmb 15y ago
I think this is the most common definition. Largely because it is self-enforcing: most "Developers" don't like to refer to themselves as merely "Programmers", because programming is only a subset of what they actually do. People who just co
560.
by rickmb 15y ago
Now add the fact that Richard Dreyfuss' fame and fortune comes mostly from the entertainment industry with its ridiculously restrictive licensing (which doesn't allow me to see his film work online, since I'm in a "wrong" country), and the
561.
by rickmb 15y ago
I've never heard executing people referred to as "quirky".
562.
by rickmb 15y ago
Stopped reading after the first pointless micro-optimization. With some very rare exceptions, the cost of these kind of optimizations in terms of resulting in hard to maintain and change code are far greater than the cost of bluntly adding
563.
by rickmb 15y ago
In other words: it still falls into the "you have to be stupid enough to allow total strangers behind the wheel of your car" category, they just don't need you to hand over the keys anymore. Got it. Stupidity is not a problem that can be so
564.
by rickmb 15y ago
Responsible citizens my ass. Google does what is in Google's interests. Remember how Google vowed to fight for Net Neutrality until it became against their business interests in the mobile arena? Google is "duty-bound" only to its sharehold
565.
by rickmb 15y ago
Yep, 100% spam. Which also makes this business practice illegal in a large number of countries around the world.
566.
by rickmb 15y ago
The news has now gone mainstream in the Netherlands, I doubt if this practice will survive the legal and political shitstorm it's about to cause.
567.
by rickmb 15y ago
It always amazes me that people who consider it an ethical issue by equating copyright infringement with "stealing", have no ethical problem with the fact that copyright law is being blatantly abused to achieve exactly the opposite of what
568.
by rickmb 15y ago
That's what I consider "the best", but unfortunately that kind of professionalism even rarer than the "superstar" programmer. Which is very unfortunate should you manage to hire one of those "superstars", since they need at least three of t
569.
by rickmb 15y ago
People seem to underestimate what a unique product the iPad is: a consumer product that has been build to the highest standards of engineering and design, and would have been totally credible as a high end luxury product at three times the
570.
by rickmb 15y ago
Some people are both programmers and social beings. They need to be able to chat, joke, exchange ideas (that may not have anything to do with the work at hand), talk about the f *ing weather on order to facilitate collaborating as a team

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