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 AppleCare you can contact Apple directly instead of the seller. But as far as the rest is concerned, in most EU countries you have better warranty by law than what Apple tries to peddle as "service".
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 warranty whilst EU consumer laws already mandate minimal warranty standards. As a consumer you almost always have to explicitly assert your rights or you'll get screwed.
Apple has just made itself a high profile target with it's AppleCare Protection Plan, and it doesn't help that Apple is being systematically uncooperative when consumers claim their warranty rights.
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 who posted in that thread many months ago.
Personally, I gave up on participating in any kind of activism about 10 years ago, partly because I didn't feel we were getting anywhere and the next generation didn't seem to care. I feel pretty uncomfortable about that now.
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 want to maintain the status quo.
If curiosity and creativity was constrained by what happens to be illegal at any given time, our society would look a lot different, and not for the better.
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 until after you've subscribed.
And please, unless what you do is explicitly aimed at the US, treat all users as equal. We're not "international users", just list the options equally for everyone.
But yes, the fact that it's on by default is questionable.
However, most ISP-supplied consumer routers have firewall rules on by default, for very good reasons. Although I personally think this one should be opt-in, on by default is not necessarily evil in this particular use case.
Besides being a bit ham-fisted, there's nothing inherently wrong with an ISP offering filters against malicious content.
Also, with the user-accessible opt-out, it would even be legal under the Netherlands' much praised Net Neutrality law. Unlike most of these alarmist headlines, the ISP is not blocking anything.
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 particular, especially in the context where virtually all display ads violate European privacy laws because of cross-site user tracking without explicit permission.
It's just one more additional security/privacy feature on a consumer router to help ordinary users protect themselves.
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 get paid twice, so this pattern is perpetuated to the mutual benefit of everyone except the developers forced to spend 50% of their time building something they know won't work, and the other 50% rewriting it...
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 applying for it.
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.
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 diversity in Europe.
I'm very well aware of the significant differences between the Deep South and the West Coast etc, but those differences pale in comparison to the vast centuries old cultural differences you can find in Europe even between towns only a few dozen miles apart. Hell, the differences inside the US barely compare to regional differences within small European countries.
This is not a matter of ignorance. Even in well educated and well traveled Americans seem to be unable to really comprehend the depth of cultural differences outside the US.
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 usual "fuck of, you're from the wrong country", and no point does Amazon inform me about the nature and quality of the download, other than the mp3 format.
Yeah, I can infer the fact that it is non-DRM from the mp3 format, but other than that it's still shadier and less informative than the average piracy side.
Not to mention insulting and utterly useless to me and 16 million fellow countrymen in one of the richest Western nations, were, oh surprise, piracy rules.
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 limited collection.
The effort involved in buying something legally and DRM-free is just ridiculous, and the notion that I can trust pirates more to be honest, transparent and upfront about their offering really takes the cake.
Only in the copyright exploitation industry is the legal business more shady than the "criminals".
The only real difference is that with AppleCare you can contact Apple directly instead of the seller. But as far as the rest is concerned, in most EU countries you have better warranty by law than what Apple tries to peddle as "service".