I think I can do that too.
I think he never really implied that the highest price meant better quality. If you try, you can read that from the article, but there is something else you can read from it.
I think what he was saying was more like: if the difference in costs is smaller than the appreciated gaining in life comfort, then do it, spend the money in the expensive one.
The point being, don't be cheap if not being cheap can make your life better.
Have you read the book The Elementary Particles from Michel Houellebecq? There is something in it about what you are talking about, and it is an interesting novel, that I think, reads more like an essay towards the end, heh.
Take border-radius for instance. It is 'fluff'. It makes no functional difference to the page whether it is there or not.
Now, for Moz and Webkit, I get nice looking rounded corners for negligible effort. In order to duplicate that look on IE there are any number of ways to do it, but all of them involve enormously much more effort, and are much more fragile (anything where you need pixel perfect positioning is fragile and easily broken by different browser versions).
Additionally, the longer WE support IE's blatant disregard of standards, the less incentive they have to adhere to those standards.
I know this is a particular case, but want to share anyway.
I always heard in Mexico that German people were very cold and dry. When I visited north Germany about 4 years ago, I was introduced to my aunt's mother-in-law, and as I'm accustomed I went right up to her, gave her a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. Well her reaction amused me, she got in a very cheerful mood and I got an extra spoonful of food at the table. :)
No? then you suggest to wait at least 6 months after an intensive time-consuming-I-can't-do-anything-else English fast course to get up to speed to a competent English hacker level, so I can read/participate in something like HN?
Does this looks realistic to you? considering that the number of good Spanish hackers to-be and that-are is not small.
I don't want to suggest that anybody who speaks a language other than English is disadvantaged in any way. Quite the opposite.
But it is a fact that English is the language of technology (and science). If you want to participate then you really need to be familiar with the lingo. This is why I said "love it or hate it".
If you want to be a good hacker then you must learn English because there's a huge amount of advice on the web in English to help you. If you can't read it then you're missing out.
Starting a community in another language works in the short term, but it really isn't productive in the long term (either for the members of that community or the wider community). This was the key point I was making.
To address your specific point: what is six months? I've spent over 20 years learning to program in various languages. Why not spend six months learning English so that you can participate with the global programming community?
Ah, good hackers will eventually learn English, at their own pace though. Why spend 6 months in a really intensive English training course stopping everything else when you can have an influx of material on your own language now?
Plus, believe me when I say, not every Mexican teenager guy/gal with skills have the resources to pay a training course like the one you suggest (I didn't, learnt it on my own, took many years, still not perfect though).
I'm arguing for people hanging out in English forums rather than hanging out in forums designed to cater to their own language.
But I do take your point that good hackers will eventually learn English. I'm suggesting that this is by necessity - it's not a language you can ignore if you work in the technology sector.
I think what he was saying was more like: if the difference in costs is smaller than the appreciated gaining in life comfort, then do it, spend the money in the expensive one.
The point being, don't be cheap if not being cheap can make your life better.