MikeMacMan

Ironically, back in the 90s Anchor Steam was just about the only good craft beer I could get in Japan.

the students

I'm seeing issues in 2a but not 2b. Anyone having issues in 2b?

Reminds me of this brief scene from Community. RIP Michael K Williams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8e2f9j-iJo

I would first ask them what they mean by "it worked for me". How long did it take? How well can you read?

If you're talking about learning Kana, then my argument would be that some flashcards or computer based drills are going to be a more efficient method of learning, if perhaps less pleasant, than reading a story for each character. And why go through this circuitous thought process of seeing the character, recalling the appropriate story, and then divining the meaning? We don't do that for our letters, and we don't do that for simple arithmetic.

Very well said. I was immediately reminded of those awful "Remembering the Kanji" books when I read this article. You don't "reason" meanings of characters. You drill the meanings into your brain through practice, practice, practice. There are no shortcuts, and no substitutes for rote memorization and drills. Any book or article about language learning with the words "in just X minutes" or "easy" or "in only X days" is selling snake oil. It's just friggin hard.

That was my impression, too. You weren't grandstanding or sounding sanctimonious, but rather saw an opportunity to write an informative article using Sqoot at an example. It was well-written and entertaining. Thanks for writing it!

I think you're being a little unfair here.

You need to talk to a salesperson because payroll is complicated, every business's needs are different, and most small businesses want some kind of personal touch. If they let you just sign up for what you think is the best solution for you, chances are you'll get it wrong and you won't be satisfied.

I'll give you an example: I manage a retail business that is composed of 5 different LLCs, each with their own payroll. When I went to ADP, I needed a salesperson to help me migrate all my payroll data, choose a suitable cutover date, talk through what kinds of special services I might need (direct deposit, checks drawn against ADP's accounts vs. our own checking accounts, etc).

Lastly, customer service is very important when it comes to payroll, and I see the sales process as a demo of their customer service.

Could somebody like ADP offer a self-service solution for somebody like you, who knows what they're doing and doesn't require much? Of course they could. But then the burden of getting the setup exactly right is now placed on you. And if you screw it up, then you'll be calling them for help. That's not an experience they'd prefer the customer to have.

This makes sense. I majored in Japanese in college. There were 3 kinds of students in our language classes:

1. Students for whom it came naturally 2. Students who could be competent if they worked really hard 3. Students who, no matter how hard they tried, weren't going to learn to speak Japanese. Wasn't gonna happen.

Bad teaching methods might result in some #2 types being mischaracterized as hopeless #3's, but I think no amount of pedagogical innovation can overcome the fact that some people just can't do certain things. (Of course, it could be a function of age and brain wiring, since all citizens of Japan, even the stupid ones, have no trouble learning Japanese.)

- The recession disproportionately affected rural Japan. In Tokyo you see lots of shopping and commerce. However, prefectures in places like Kyushu have unemployment rates above 10%

- An entire generation of baby-boomers working as middle-manager types got highly-inflated mortgages during the bubble, only to be downsized or have their pay/benefits cut in the aftermath. These people have been hit very hard.

- I'm not sure of the latest numbers, but Japan has a deficit problem that rivals the US. As a % of GDP it might be worse.

Gmail flagged it as spam...

I don't besmirch LEGO for doing what is an entirely rational for them: design products whose pieces, like puzzle pieces, don't have much versatility outside the context of that playset, leading children to tire of them quickly and want a new set.

Of course, LEGO still sells the general-purpose sets with instruction books to show you how to construct dozens of different buildings/vehicles/etc. My son prefers those, but every kid is different.

The No Girls Allowed theme is pretty easy to explain: mass-market films of the type that will have product tie-ins are almost universally aimed at boys, and LEGO is simply downstream from that trend.

There are toys that give kids' imaginations some exercise, and there are those that, like video games and Harry Potter LEGO sets, don't deliver quite the same workout. It's up to you to cultivate in your child a healthy appetite for the former.

EDIT: I would add that the Toy Story movies do a good job of echoing the nostalgia that adults feel for those older, simpler toys. My son and my affection for those movies has in some way conditioned us to stretch our imaginations and breathe new life into old toys.

I am going to try using this for an employee scheduling tool I'm working on. It's nice to see everyone's shifts all at once, to see which shifts overlap, how many people are working at 2pm, etc.

No, it's not "almost free". It's paid for by the company.

You are correct, but large companies get dramatically better rates and better coverage than small companies. My family's small business has seen healthcare premiums increase more than 20% each year for the past few years. We have had to cut benefits (increase deductibles and copays, etc). It's a sad state of affairs that employees of large companies are insulated from (for now).

Parenthood is kind of a good rehearsal for founding a company: you won't sleep much, you're very emotionally invested, you're on the hook for everything, and boy is it hard without the right partner.

There are a few currents working against startups in Japan:

- Smart, ambitious people tend to join large, prestigious corporations, or government agencies

- Up until a few years ago, forming a company was very expensive (3 million yen minimum)

- Seniority is a powerful force in the Japanese workplace, which I suspect prevents young college grads from introducing the latest technologies in their companies.

- Japan has struggled to transition to a post-industrial economy, and IT is still dominated by hardware companies.

Real estate agents are not allowed to collect more than 1 month's rent as a fee. This means that the borrower's and landlord's agents will have to split the fee, each of them getting only half a month's rent. In many cases, some of the 'key money' will filter back to the agent as commission.

I meant choosing a project that is not too difficult, but is interesting. Solve a real problem, even if it's small. One advantage you have is that instead of being a programmer, you have expertise in something else. Are their any problems in your own field that you can solve with software?

I started programming when I was 24 (11 years ago) and working at my first job. A coworker was my mentor early on, and we pair programmed frequently for a couple of months. I read a couple of Wrox Java books and just learned by writing a lot of code and reading as much as I could.

Luckily, I was tasked with developing a whole bunch of forms for a client-server application, which the IDE helped me out with a lot with its WYSIWYG editor, and the programming work was relatively easy (no I/O, no DB access, etc).

The keys for me were:

1. Having a mentor early on

2. Flattening the learning curve with an IDE.

3. Choosing the right project

The 1.5 million you cite includes franchised employees, while the 60K revenue/employee number does not.

"I won’t bore you with a long description, let me just say that it sucks. I means really sucks. I mean sucks like a collapsing star sucks."

No, please, bore us with a long description. I migrated my family business's 5 company accounts from Quickbooks Desktop (Win) to Quickbooks Online this past March. I use it every day, as does my mom (who is not very computer savvy). We're both in agreement that it is much better than Desktop, at least for what we do (entering sales receipts, bank reconciliations, running reports). For us, one key benefit of using Quickbooks Online is the ability to switch between companies very quickly.

One downside with image buttons: they are really, really, annoying to localize. A compromise would be to have the button itself as an image and overlay the label in HTML.

Mother-in-Law

Sure, but by that time she had already committed to getting her money back. People don't constantly re-evaluate their decisions as new information comes in. They're not machines.

Well, "the east" is often shorthand for "low cost outsourcing countries", so in that sense Japan is a country apart from its neighbors.

These discussions also neglect the enormous selection bias present when you're talking about outsourcing. The vast majority of developers in Japan and China are not proficient enough in a foreign language to work with teams in other countries. We're gazing at these countries' developers through a very, very narrow lens.

People make decisions based on principle, and the information they have at the time. The shopper probably didn't anticipate that it would take 15 minutes to correct her purchase. She probably didn't have a good feel for what the price difference would be. She knew she was paying more than she should, so she said something. I don't think I would act any differently.

When I was in high school, I started meditating before my bowling competitions, using this book as a guide: http://amzn.com/B002VGXFVW (Zen Mind, Beginners Mind).

It definitely helped my performance, and I want to bring meditation back into my life. Maybe this thread will help :)

I like this one:

"The facts are known to all who care to know. The press, foreign and domestic, has presented documentation to refute each falsehood as it appears. But the power of the government’s propaganda apparatus is such that the citizen who does not undertake a research project on the subject can hardly hope to confront government pronouncements with fact."

This speaks to the great failing of today's media. Who has time to stay current on all the world's events? I can hardly keep up with my Hacker News RSS feed! We rely on the media to do this research that Chomsky speaks of (or at least to use sources that have done said research). Given limitations on our time and focus, we have no choice but to accept what the media reports at face value. The more information proliferates, the more important becomes the filter.

Most companies wouldn't give you anything. I think 3% is a fair amount.

The point is that everyone is used to this pattern: free trial that will switch to paid subscription unless you cancel.