Ntagg

I replied to a couple other people, but to be clear, I didn't grant access to the GitHub Org. I only granted access to my own private repos (personal, non-work projects). I actually don't even have the ability to grant any permissions on the GitHub org :)

Heh. Yeah, I responded to clarify that I did not grant access to that Org.

Ah, good question! No, I did not request access to the GitHub private org.

I'm a Technical Product Manager at GitHub. I just took a look at this (pretty cool, maybe we should have deeper user metrics...). I saw a couple of comments about the 'write access' so I just figured I'd chime in and point out that it's a required scope to get all of the private contrib info out of the API. I definitely encourage people to be mindful of what access they grant, but for what it's worth I did it :)

Good tip. I really like bustaname.com Their second tab is like wordoid, but they have other tools too.

Do you have reverse dns records set up?

Zed, are you going to be writing any other books for Python, like Python 3 or more advanced topics? Maybe "Advanced Python the Hard Way?"

LPTHW starts to get more complicated around exercise 30.

The course is on sale at AppSumo: http://www.appsumo.com/learn-python-promo/?act=dealtwt (referral code comes from the original source -- does not belong to me)

The course includes video lectures and a Q&A feature. I have not taken the course, but I really liked the first edition book.

I can't tell either. You can review the new edition in HTML for free here: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/

It's a pretty interesting idea, I haven't seen this before.

Adgrok, monthly subscription, and they've been great (my only affiliation is as a customer).

I'm sure they've realized the real benefit here is that people will search Google, rather than typing in a domain, which leads to incremental traffic/searches/ad impressions.

Well, I signed up for an invite. I like your "referral for reward" marketing strategy. Maybe include a "more" link to give info to people who want to find out what you're doing?

Not a lot of copy here to comment on. Feels like you're phishing for users...

I love the concept of different monetezation strategies for different types of players. That's a game-changer (pun!). Love to watch how it's executed.

Well said, this is especially true of sites that require a lot of users before they become useful (dating sites, classifieds, etc).

It'd also be cool to give the start-ups ideas of what kind of perks they could offer early adopters. I thought lunch with a founder was a fun idea, but I had trouble thinking of perks that were genuinely worthwhile and incentivizing.

Let's say there are ten people in a room and they each give five dollars to an "elected" member who gets to redistribute that money, after which all the members re-vote on the next elected member. A savvy elected member would redistribute the money to five members, plus himself, thus perpetually stay in power and continue to receive the majority of votes.

I use this illustration to show that as long as one official or group gets to continue in power, they don't have incentive to do right by everyone; rather, they are incentivized to do well to only a slim majority.

The short-term problem this article presents is that our country's budget crisis demands a surplus contribution from the wealthy. For argument's sake, I'll admit it does.

The understated, long-term problem is that elected officials are personally motivated to spend their political power on getting re-elected, which only requires making a little more than half of their constituents satisfied.

My suggestion would be to stop allowing anyone to be re-elected. Once they know that their decisions don't have to be popular, they're free to make decisions that help long-term, even at short-term discomfort or dissatisfaction. There are obvious problems (how this reflects on their party, for example), but I think that there's a solution embedded in this line of reasoning.

Lots of functioninal things lower quality of life. That's not a very rigid or useful test.

The laffer curve would indicate that people would stop working and contributing once they stop getting incentivized. I would stop every year, once I hit the threshold.

Foodzie - foodzie.com - I especially like how scalable their design is. Notice how they (or their sellers) are able to adapt their design to each seller's brand?

Shopify - shopify.com - I've always thought their site makes their service seem incredibly intuitive and easy to use, which suits their market well.

High fees don't necessarily mean a bad deal. I think most people would be willing to give up a percentage of profit in exchange for an improved return (or perceived improvement) than they'd get otherwise. Isn't that similar to the VC world? Many start-up entrepreneurs give up a portion of their projects (and profits) for an improved chance at having the project perform better overall.