cph1

> That's getting close to paranoia.

Selling users' personal data to data mining and advertising companies is very common. It's not really paranoid to think that Facebook would do such a thing, considering that they call their users trusting dumb fucks and blatantly disregard their users' request for decent privacy.

> EU law is enough to keep you safe

Most of the times when an American Internet company have been challenged by EU law, the response from the company has been, "We're an American company, and our users uploaded their data to our servers which are placed in America." Then there's not much EU can do.

> Why would my email and contacts be locked into iCloud?

Don't ask me, ask Apple - they're the ones who're doing it :) Contacts was one of the things that Apple mentioned would be stored in iCloud at their talk a couple of ago. I'm not sure about email.

One of the reasons your contacts would be stored in iCloud is so that they can work with Apple's (proprietary) new chat/message system; iMessages.

I certainly hope so.

> To move your data you will need to sync to a mac and then manually move your data.

Which is exactly what a lot of users will be unable to do. They'll rather avoid the hassle by buying a new Apple device yet again.

I'm not pointing my finger at Apple per se. If they provide a reasonably user-friendly way of moving your data then it's hard to blame them. But the fact is that most people will want to avoid the hassle, which means the iCloud becomes a lock-in mechanism.

Photos, documents, contacts, email, music - just about everything that "normal" users have on their computers.

It's true; iCloud has the potential to be a massive lock-in mechanism, ensuring that people will continue to buy Apple devices for years on end because buying anything else will mean manually moving your data out of iCloud - which probably won't be easy for the average user.

"Gandhi.net seems to have..."

It's http://gandi.net (without the H).

"I can't find any outside references for the trademark registration however."

Search for "no bullshit" here: http://www.tmview.europa.eu/tmview/welcome.html

I know their ad system - I've used it myself. My point is that they may do other kinds of things without you knowing.

- "Facebook doesn't really give your information to the advertisers"

How do you know? I think this is an appropriate time to mention what Zuckerberg once said about Facebook users: "They trust me - dumb fucks."

- "Apple will always care"

Apple uses conflict minerals and has its devices made on slave-like factories. You really think they care about anything other than creating value for its stockholders? I use Apple products myself, but I'm certainly not naive about how big business works.

You're absolutely right. You can't always tell whether there's more content below if there's no scrollbar. I don't want to have to scroll just to see if there's more content.

"...Germany’s traditional engineering-driven approach to business, with its emphasis on perfection, longevity, pride in ingenuity and culture of deep-thinking..."

I fail to see how those things are negative. As a matter of fact, I wish more entrepreneurs would adopt this kind of thinking: Being proud of your craft and your product.

Sure, you need to be able to make decisions, but there is also something to be said for making quality products instead of going for execution speed over quality.

Quality-driven thinking is part of what makes Germany one of the largest economies in the world - despite the fact that it is much less populous than other big economies like the US, Japan, and China.

I see a lot of "Europe is like this, Europe is like that" comments here... I wish people would realize that in terms of culture and legislation the various European countries are wildly different. The difference between Southern and Northern Europe is massive (think USA - Mexico), and even between countries that are near each other geographically there are quite big differences (think USA - Canada).

Those differences aren't a bad thing in any way and don't mean that we can't be united in some sense - but please just realize that saying that "Europe is like this and that" is like saying "North America is like this and that".

Not to mention Disqus - they use Django.

Python is the most popular serverside solution among startups according to this poll: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843083

Ruby was second, PHP third.

(JavaScript got the most votes, but everyone uses JavaScript on their website, and I refuse to believe that the many people who voted for JavaScript all use it on the serverside (like Node.js, e.g.). That's why I claim that Python is the most popular serverside language according to that poll).

I'm willing to pay for email instead of using Gmail. The combination of Google's massive accumulation of data about you and American authorities' relatively easy access to the data strikes me as somewhat creepy. Google claims to not be evil, but the truth is, we don't know, because Google employees are contractually bound to secrecy on a lot of issues.

People say that "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product," and there's something to that.

The amount of money needed to get a normal IMAP account with SSL is quite small, and worth it if you ask me.

http://runbox.com/ and http://gandi.net/ are good options for those who want paid secure accounts hosted in Europe.

Btw., they only used their homemade submarine to tow the rocket platform at the first launch attempt (last September).

This time around they decided to enable the rocket platform to sail on its own: http://politiken.tv/nyheder/videnskab/article1298751.ece

Here's a picture of the rocket and the submarine: http://i2-images2.tv2net.dk/s/49/20942149-29ce372936dd69adf1...

The picture was taken in September last year when the first (failed) attempt to launch the rocket was made.

Here's a picture of the succesful launch today: http://www.bornholmstidende.dk/nonsec/NPIX/2011/6/Launch.jpg

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmGmymAWI4E

I'm not sure there's an official video. The Danish TV station TV 2 filmed the whole thing from their news helicopter, and that is the footage you see on the YouTube link I posted and on http://nyhederne.tv2.dk/article.php/id-40453154:dansk-rumrak... (there's a short commercial before the video that can be closed).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmGmymAWI4E

Video of the lift-off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmGmymAWI4E