Once there was a man who went on vacation and left his neighbor to take care of his house while he was away. One week into the vacation, the man phoned his nei

Once there was a man who went on vacation and left his neighbor to take care of his house while he was away. One week into the vacation, the man phoned his neighbor. "How's it going?" he asked. "Well," said the neighbor, "I'm afraid your cat is dead." The man was, naturally, shocked and horrified. "That's terrible!" he said. "You shouldn't have just told me flat out like that. Couldn't you have broken it to me gently? You could have said something like, 'Well, your cat got stuck on the roof. We called the fire department to get him down, but the cat slipped and fell. He landed badly and was knocked unconscious. We rushed him to the vet, but there was nothing to be done, so I'm afraid we had to put him to sleep, and he went blissfully to heaven.'" Two weeks later the man called the neighbor again. "How's it going?" he asked. There was a pause on the other end of the phone. Then the neighbor said, "well, your mother-in-law got stuck on the roof..." --- Anyway, enough with the old jokes. What I'm trying to say is that I don't see anything wrong with maxklein's critique. It's not mean. It's just blunt. And it's barely even "Linus Torvalds blunt" -- it's certainly not "Philip Greenspun blunt", and it isn't even visible on the Steve Jobs bluntness scale. Maybe it could have been more elegantly blunt. I certainly aspire to that, but it's still better to be inelegantly blunt -- it's better to be inelegantly blunt and completely wrong, so long as you're being honest -- than it is to just say "gosh, it sure is a website! great job, guys!" and let the poor folks run the risk of being schooled, quietly and politely, by the market as they bleed to death over the course of two or three years.