rgraham

Practice when you have a chance.

Read 'Getting to Yes' and 'Bargaining for Advantage.' Use the principles when making any large purchase or changing jobs.

Most retail cashiers can also give 10% discounts without approval. Find opportunities to negotiate.

Buy things on craigslist and be patient.

If you read the books, you'll also see more everyday situations and compromises as chances to use negotiating skills. There's no reason it needs to be money.

If you're in software you can also read patio11's valuable thoughts: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

Anyone have recommendations for lawyers for bootstrapping?

I don't have as much experience with pandas, but I've used window functions and psql queries in place of that sort of data munging for production web applications. We have tens of millions of rows and near real time reporting requirements.

Reach out if you want to compare notes.

Read 'Getting to Yes' and 'Bargaining to Advantage' for more specifics about this discussion. I think everyone should read them. It doesn't hurt to include 'Influence.'

I've got to confirm the troubles of rbenv in production. I highly encourage alternative solutions and I'm furiously examining BrightBox.

Re: job redistribution.

What about the New Deal's CCC?

By what measure?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Deve...

Also, a single number will be misleading. France has fewer immigrants and thus a different cultural structure. It also has very different neighbors and trade partners.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-bo...

"I think you need a lot of context to seriously examine anything." -- The Wire, Season 5

There is widespread LTE on Straight Talk on both T-Mobile and AT&T in my area (Austin).

I've had Straight Talk for a year. I setup auto-pay, got my SIM cards, and have never needed support. My data usage is always under 2GB and I'm aware of using WiFi where possible. It's been a dream.

I've also never had a good customer experience with AT&T, Verizon, etc.

This appears to be the case. Well, perhaps not an additional fee, but filing isn't cheap.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee031913.htm

Leslie passed away a while back, but he remains iconic.

I tend to think he knew they would find him and he preferred to be famous and hopefully talked about when they did. He wanted to control what he could of how he might be presented to the public. He probably also did not want to disappear one day with nary a word about him or spoken by him ever again. He wanted change. He risked a lot for it.

I don't think he risked it so he could do a few interviews. The fame and media attention is a tool.

Incognito window + Google search the text for the article title

The M16 has been semi-auto (single fire and three round bursts) since the Vietnam war with the rare exception of special forces weapons[1]. Fully automatic mainline rifles are inaccurate, wasteful, expensive, and less effective.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M16_rifle#M16A2

AKs in the US have been semi-automatic for a long time. It takes an experienced gunsmith to restore fully automatic firing to an imported AK. They have been sold this way in the US for decades and are a cheaper alternative to the AR-15.

Firstly, I don't think anyone is advocating for their freedom to 'gun people down.'

More importantly, I don't think your interest in particular freedoms should arbitrate which ones others receive. I can understand that you don't wish to exercise your 2nd amendment rights. No one is force-handing you a gun.

Freedoms are about choices for people. "I don't want this freedom, so no one should have it," is misguided. Plenty of others are minimally interested in freedoms you enjoy. Support freedom.

Do you have a citation for that? AK47s became popular with many hunters and target shooters because they're rugged, cheap, and have really cheap ammunition for target practice with a rifle.

Bargaining for Advantage is a good look at different tactics, positions, strategies, and how you can balance them.

I'd recommend SEOMoz beginner's guide and I think you should also checkout Patrick McKenzie's writings (http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/ under SEO).

I was able to use these ideas to create an experiment that doubled my organic traffic (http://whitetailsoftware.com/2013/01/how-i-doubled-organic-s...), but know that some parts of SEO are simply measured in calendar time.

I totally agree.

I have an article about how to try to pack that in a brief email: http://www.ashmaurya.com/2012/08/cold-emailing/

Sometimes, though, you are better off making a call. http://blog.asmartbear.com/cold-calling.html

I didn't say you can't market specs. Sounds like someone does understand you.

I also didn't intend to imply that you should not build a better mousetrap. The point is that building a better mousetrap is insufficient.

So important. Spend 2 or 3 days a week focused on this.

It's easy to court some Lean methodology, find something you're pretty sure people want, and then go into 'build' mode. Don't ever go into 'build' mode.

Customers come from marketing activities. No one clamors to be at Walmart to buy the new and improved mousetrap. Some of these take calendar time.

I think the what here might be less important than why for pricing. It's easy to get a sense of your platform from your website, but who is your target customer and why are they paying you? Does this save them time? Money? Make them money? Got any scenarios or customer sketches?

How exactly is the $263 billion dollar market cap company that pays dividends and has $2 earnings per share with millions of customers dying? Slowed growth at that scale is an artifact of size relative to market potential. It doesn't mean the company is dying. Not even if you really dislike it.

Greg Glassman (CrossFit founder) likes to say, "Shoot for a low trajectory over the horizon or gravity will fix it for you."

It's true of starting anything. You're more likely to get where you want to go in small, incremental steps.

For my book (see profile) I developed the idea because my posts about cold calling for entrepreneurs became so popular.

After that, I just started collecting emails, asking the list members qualitative questions, and honing copy by testing.

If you started with an idea for a book and no audience demanding it, you should really execute the whole custdev process in one form or another to verify demand. Pre-sales is a great avenue for that.

Does anyone think that 'Starbucks' or 'Pay me $1' are great signals for Craftsmanship?

I know plenty of office environments with free coffee. There is your alternative, but it isn't relevant. People buy experiences. You go to Starbucks because you like the experience. The terminology. The chatty baristas. The drive-thru you can complain about with your sympathetic co-workers. They could probably charge twice what they do and keep a big fraction of their customers.

There is nothing new under the sun, but people are forgetful.

You can learn a lot of nuts and bolts stuff from guys like Rob Walling and Patrick McKenzie. It can take time for things to sink in, but nothing pushes it faster than creating your own product and trying to sell it.

If you have a commute, I'd recommend listening to some podcasts like Internet Business Mastery, Foolish Adventure, Lifestyle Business Podcast, Startup Success, and Startups for the Rest of Us. Find the ones that suit you.

Reminds me of 'Think and Grow Rich' by Napoleon Hill.