The reaction was very reasonable (generous, in fact): A bit of denial followed by a very discreet "no thanks."
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.
Sorry, but I think it should be clear from my comment that your title is indeed putting people off of reading your work at all. I don't doubt that it's worth reading, but I think you should consider that the title itself, accuracy aside, is dissuading more people than just me from reading your work.
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.
"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.
While I've never been particularly interested in YC itself, that quote is something I'd never read, and honestly it's really sad. That he straight up admits that he's looking for people who are [synonym for evil that doesn't make him look as bad] is really telling and sad.
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.
While this is an interesting idea, if this becomes common practice, the only possible result is a chilling effect on the willingness of informers to inform or whistleblowers to blow said whistles. It's another needle in the coffin of anonymity.
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.
My question would be what this really does that isn't already happening. App discovery is definitely an open problem, but if what you're doing is facilitating sharing apps with people who know you (already easy directly between individuals) or seeing what people at large like (already done via the top charts), I'm not sure what the point is.
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.
Sad doesn't even begin to describe how people should feel. People should feel irate.
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.
And in the actual context of the way "ramen" is misused in the article, your snarky response misses the point of the GP. Thanks for trying, play better next time.
Japan (and any Confucian culture) shames people who do not accept their traditional roles. Men are expected to work until they fall dead. Women are expected to take care of children (while optionally following career at the same time). This sort of works in closed system, where people do not really know about any alternatives.
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.
If it's actively removing the http:// when you type it yourself, yes, I can see that. But then from a developer standpoint it only makes so much sense to develop using a browser with basically zero market share.
There are two main points for a programming blog - to keep your own notes in one place, and to try and raise your profile / build an audience to make the next contract or pay review a much happier experience.
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."
"Better presentation is more effective at attracting attention" would, I think, be the only reasonable conclusion here (and then only because it seems axiomatic).
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.
While that Sharp tablet looks very interesting, I'd be wary of the fact that they also produce the AQUOS series. I'm currently using a Crystal and it is far and away the single worst touchscreen experience I've had (yes, the G1 did indeed boast more reliable touch performance).
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.
My assumptions regarding where the term "the 1%" came from aside, it seems to me that it's fairly useless for exactly this reason. If you want to talk about people whose means significantly exceed the vast majority of others, a smaller proportion is almost certainly in order (without, as another comment mentions, a PPP adjustment or something similar).
Then perhaps a better response to the Oxfam report would be to at least attempt a more realistic measurement of wealth and present something similar with that addition/adjustment.
This makes some serious assumptions regarding what exactly "close to identical" means.
"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."
The narrative quality of The Da Vinci Code does indeed scream PowerPoint. A quick Google search does not immediately yield support, but I'm going with this anyway as it meshes with my loathing for that particular work. :)