russgray

Meh, I don't consider my house an investment (in that I don't expect it to generate a return), it's somewhere to live. Most people understand that a car is a terrible 'investment', but if you intend to drive the same one for a decade you're better off buying it than leasing it. Same thing, but different scale.

It's a good simple model, but I think it's TOO simple. If you own a house and pay off the mortgage, two massive changes occur: 1) You free up that monthly payment for investment, and 2) the amount of money required to maintain your standard of living nosedives. The same standard of living you get for $40k probably costs <$25k once the mortgage is paid.

I never find this answer convincing. Firstly, most renters are unlikely to invest the difference - we are a nation of spenders. Secondly, that rent will creep up, whereas my mortgage payment stays the same - eventually that difference will disappear, or even open up in the other direction. Thirdly, I'll have paid off my mortgage in another 12 years or so, at which point I can invest my entire payment every month whilst rent still needs to be paid. Over the time period I intend to stay in my house, I am confident I'll make out like a bandit compared to if I'd rented it.

Out of interest, what do you call customer services to do for you? I bank with a big bank, and I think I've needed to call them twice in the last decade.

There was a lot more to it than that. Microsoft actively threatened to withdraw licenses from OEMs that preinstalled/bundled rival software as defaults. Given the Windows monopoly, OEMs had to comply or die. Given the massive inertia against the average non-technical user installing an alternative to IE, this effectively equated to Microsoft using their Windows monopoly to dominate an unrelated market.

Apple are nowhere near close to this until they own 95% of the global cellphone market and start making credible threats to destroy HTC or Samsung if they dare to sell an Android phone, or an iPhone with Chrome preinstalled.

Many of those options are now set by default in Tor Browser.

Great idea, but the UI is a little confusing. After writing a comment do I need to click 'Add comment' AND 'Submit review'? Or does either do the job? Also I forgot to set a star rating, perhaps default to zero and prompt user if they don't set it? Why can't I see the reviews/comments I've submitted on my account page?

As someone who was born in the UK and has lived here for all of his 35 years, I can confirm that this is someone taking the piss.

Sounds like the touch keyboard is a slightly better cover, and slightly cheaper. I think if you want a laptop replacement that can be used as a tablet, go for the real keyboard. If you want a tablet that can occasionally double as a laptop, get the touch keyboard.

I make more than 70k EUR pa at a startup in London (but then I'm sure London isn't particularly representative of Europe).

I remember my first home distro (outside of the university labs) was Definite Linux, in 2000. The installation CD came free with a magazine.

I'm in the UK - I still get the message, but no mention of advertising.

"We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the BBC website. However, if you would like to, you can change your cookie settings at any time."

I got that too. Google cached it though:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...

I hate the phrase 'must-have'. Of this list of 10, I could imagine getting moderate use of evernote and (maybe) redlaser. The others are of little-to-no use to me at all.

Mahalo are worse off. There are plenty of people out there - me included - who neither knew much nor cared much about Mahalo but may have considered working there had an opportunity arisen. I wouldn't work there now though. That might not give Jason any sleepless nights, but I bet many better developers than I have watched this play out with great distaste and resolved never to put themselves in the way of the people involved.

Andrew Black was in his 30s when he founded Betfair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betfair

Hi,

I'm the author of that article. I actually have a blog post in the works that addresses your concerns fairly directly, since they are concerns for me too. Keep an eye out for it. In brief, I recommend you buy a copy of Working Effectively With Legacy Code immediately, then work to get unit tests in place. Make sure you have a couple of tests for each public interface in the system. Once you have rudimentary test coverage, it becomes easier to refactor things without worrying so much about breakage.