semperfaux

The unfortunate thing is that the conclusion was "we probably just shouldn't take the money." For someone who clearly considers herself proactive and professional on matters of sexuality, this a rather profound failure in terms of sexual equality.

Don't get me wrong: This is exactly what I'd do. But it's not what I'd expect from someone selling a brand called "gutsy broads" and boasting credentials including "sexuality specialist."

Standing up to sexism isn't easy. But this isn't even an attempt, from someone who should at very least be making an attempt, not selling anecdotes that do little more than pat the author on the back for... what, exactly? This is very tepid commentary on what would otherwise be a fairly significant incident to someone in such a position.

The point isn't the quality of your work. It's your hook that's failing at least some of us to the point that you are potentially missing out on part of your target audience by default.

"10 things you didn't know about y."

"Everything you thought you knew about z is wrong."

Am I the only one that finds titles like this completely offputting? If you think you have insight that's useful to people, try not talking down to them. As it is, hell, I may not know Javascript, but I'm certainly not clicking through.

Maybe I'm just too idealistic in general -- entirely possible -- but when I read "breaking rules, but not rules that matter," I wonder who gets to decide which rules matter. Because someone obviously thought they mattered enough to be rules in the first place.

Plus, if this was written by a journalist (or someone else) based on a good-faith account from a legislator, the result will be either that person giving up his source (see paragraph 1, above) or being ethical and refusing to, potentially casting a bad light on the article whether it's appropriate or not.

Also, and I know from sites like Flickr that I'm not exactly making a bulletproof point, I really dislike the whole "leave off a letter" approach to naming a product. Telling someone "jungle dot com, but without the e" moves you from a two syllable TLD to one that requires an extra five and perhaps a follow up just to make sure they're searching for the right thing.

Of course, that assumes people are or become informed about the nature of and reason for vaccination. Which should (and, at least as of my education, was) be a trivial part of US education.

Granted: The fact that many people apparently considered Jenny McCarthy a reliable source of scientific information points to a far more basic stupidity than a failure to understand high school microbiology. It's hard to educate people in general; it's way harder to educate people who have left the compulsory school system and decided that Twitter and celebrity are reliable sources of valid health advice.

You could look at it this way, I suppose, but it falls apart a bit when you consider that Japan's falling birthrate is at least partially a product of women tossing out their traditional roles. Yeah, that still leaves plenty of pressure on everyone, but it also sets a precedent, or at least enforces it.

But no, most Japanese -- hikikomori or not -- do not "just want to live western way." The things you mention about that are largely the opposite of Japanese experience and expectation, and to suggest that kids who have never left the nation, let alone their own homes, have somehow adopted the cultural norms of cultures thousands of miles away just by consuming their internet leavings seems more than a bit questionable.

They do often spend a lot of time on the internet, but it's not a cause, it's a related fixation (when you're trapped -- by what's probably some combination of your own preference and perceived outside forces -- in a room, the internet provides a wealth of things to do). It's a social malaise that might as well be an extension of the NEET phenomenon.

If one subscribes to your extremely limited view of what a "programming blog" should be or aspire to be, and what its author(s)' goals are or should be, then maybe this is reasonable. But I don't find that at all convincing.

If you are a contractor or can build a network from the blog that 1700 pa is going to get wiped out in one deal.

No... it'll still be there. And it'll be there if you have a bad month -- or year -- and you end up depending more than you'd want on that otherwise paltry sum.

I'm not saying this is without merit. I'm just saying it's incredibly short-sighted. I like to look at the big picture as well, but to suggest that money you might bring in with minimal impact is necessarily useless in the face of the potential to bring in more money in other (largely or totally unrelated) ways strikes me as seriously out of touch with the lows reality can drop on your doorstep.

Stick a mailchimp form on your blog and keep writing interesting stuff.

This is at least much more reasonable than making blanket statements that start with "No."

In that context, it would be interest to talk to someone like kalzumeus about testing developer response to various methods of presentation for open source projects, not only to see what works in that regard, but to see whether contributors and adopters respond to the same sort of cues you'd expect to encourage consumer behavior.

I had it replaced once thanks to the fact that the hardware was known to be defective (well, known to Sharp and Softbank, at least; they didn't bother telling people) but both new and old suffer positively abysmal touch recognition and performance.

Sample size of one, of course, but buyer beware. I'd wait for feedback from the trenches before even considering a Sharp product in this category.

"Similar in design" or even "identical in design" definitely do not equate to "close to identical" in execution in all cases, despite the provided anecdote. If we're talking about something that qualifies as the same type of tool or weapon, OK. If we're talking about something with extremely similar metallurgical qualities, size, design, age, etc., then it's likely a little more than just "well, it's an x made of y found at z, they're all the same."

Unfortunately, and I hope this is not your experience, the way I understand the state of affairs in gaming in general is that if it's not as gorgeous as Mass Effect or as addictive as Candy Crush you're not likely to see many people caring.

Really, though, good on you for releasing a game! If making games is what you love, keep going; I just hope the monetization you're doing is more experimental than an attempt at making a living. People are cheap, cheap bastards, and your prices aren't even attempting to hit the whales that support most (if not all) profitable F2P games.

Edit: Also, please note that as many of us found out the hard way, Google Play does indeed show your freaking address as part of your listing, so you may want to remove it from the relevant part of your profile. It's not required but it's also not made clear that it'll be shown publicly if you enter it.

"Norms" don't necessarily make things objectively or even subjectively better. They just make them standard. Asking for norms will get you absolutely nothing, even if you get what you ask for: They'll just establish what they're already doing as normal, and continue to not tell you about the new things they start doing. Because that's what intelligence is; if they told people what they were doing, for better or worse, people would make it harder for them to do.

"Only reading 1984 is not" helpful? I definitely do not agree. Reading at least one of these works at least provides the opportunity to consider its relevance. Reading none of them trivially throws out that potential benefit.

Yes, they have this potential benefit, but no, they should not be reviewed solely in that context.

Yes, cofounders can contribute bandwidth, skills, connections, and all sorts of other positive things. They can also contribute friction, disagreement, and various other negative things. It's not a cut and dry benefit.