A Professor Explains How to Negotiate — FiLife

I'd list this as essential reading for anyone who has been though the stress of a complicated negotiation and been unsatisfied with the result.  I believe that I have improved my skills of negotiation in the last several years, though I am sure I have a ways to go.  The article below is an excellent set of tips and rules of thumb- don;t leave home without them.

Link: A Professor Explains How to Negotiate — FiLife.

Back in the saddle

I'm now back at work after holiday break, and realizing it was a real perturbance of my daily routine.  I was sick for a couple days, and then the holidays started, so I was also away from the gym.  Today was my first day at the gym in a little over a week, and it feels great to have started the morning at the gym.

That being said, I feel like I never get to the movies anymore, and always regret not seeing more of the movies that come out in the theatres.  I tend to wait until they come out on DVD, but not because I strictly prefer that. 

I also saw a lot of movies on a bootleg movie site which I won;t link to for fear of contributing to its inevitable downfall, but I did see I Am Legend-  I need to find the book.   I also saw 28 Weeks Later on that site, and no sooner had I rolled my eyes and thought "oh great, I bet 28 Months later Is going to be super"

In the theatres:

Charlie Wilson's War- excellent and no wonder we've made a mess of postwar Iraq- we had practice in Afghanistan.

No Country for Old Men- Brutal, beautiful, insightful, and totally entertaining.

The Bucket List- while NY mag called it a typecast Jack Nicholson flick crossed with a typecast Morgan Freeman flick, I thought this was pretty entertaining.  Emotional ending.

Walk Hard- Hilarious.  A send-up of Ray and Walk the Line, the Dewey Cox story made me laugh hysterically a number of times.  Nice perfromance from Tim Meadows.

A good break!

A Rare political rumination

My dad sent me Jenna Bush's A Young Teacher’s Year of Mop-Ups and Cinderella from yesterday's New York Times.  After reading it, I decided that that was not the worst thing I have ever read, but it's sad those kids know more countries than the President. ZING! It's really just a shame her father is such a stain on our collective consciousness.

I think  an important lesson my father taught me was that I should seek an identity independent of my parents- I think this is a normal process of growing up.  My dad offered part time and summer employment at various times (which paid well) to students from my high school but never to me, and at one point in my life I was kind of hurt by that.   Notwithstanding the accounting issue (that is, how separate were my finances  from my father's when I was 17) I came to understand that this broadened both my resume and my perspective.  Instead of, say, one company on my resume, by the time I graduated from college I had at least four.  Bonus question: how many of those are still in business? One.  But I digress.

So it is kind of a shame that I can't read this piece of let's all join TFA fluff by Jenna Bush and not think about the fact that her father is the president, and I am not too fond of the president. 

However, my thoughts soon returned to being mean.   I was trying to point out that no one (ok, maybe, no prudent layperson??) will be able to treat Jenna Bush as an independent person because our awareness of her is stained by her father's legacy (for those of you playing at home, the precise nature of the stain is like Piña Colada on a pool table, which you can never really get rid of, except that you can re-felt the table)

Maybe the indelible nature of the parent-child contamination association should be understood both ways.  Does this mean Jenna is able to exact revenge for when she was boozing it up in Texas?  (Wait, is she the one who went to Texas or Yale?  I just looked it up: Texas. ) Her photo in Wikipedia is captioned "Jenna "Borrachia" Bush".  I shit you not. UPDATE that wikip-edia entry was apparently a victim of vandalism, and then corrected(see here).  I didn't think that was her actual middle name but it was entertaining for sure.

Why I love the NY Times

I've said to a couple of people in the last week or so that I am the kind of person who reads the NY Times in the morning.  I would use this as a contrrast from the Journal (which I grab online) or the barely human Post or Daily News.

This habit stems from receiving the paper nearly feree for a couple years, and reading it on the way to work.  I don;t think I want to read a paper that is just business, or just NY gossip-level stories, or the police blotter.  For right now, the times is the right balance, and I thoroughly enjoyed the following from today's paper:

The secret war in Laos has consequernces- considering my passion for expionage stories, this nwas a great mix of human interest, espionage war story, and timely warning about what happens when we leave Afghanistan and Iraq: Old U.S. Allies, Still Hiding Deep in Laos

Considering how much I loved Lord of War and Boiler Room, and The Sopranos (specifically the "Webistics pump-and-dump scheme that  Matthew Bevalaqua was involved in), this story was just awesome.  Apparently there is a book somewhere in this tangled mess. Real Estate Executive With Hand in Trump Projects Rose From Tangled Past.

If I Could Trace Your Private Number Baby

OK, yes, I found this on Fark, but I only went there because I wanted to know what was happening with them filing for a trademark on "NSFW."

Apparently a teenager from Iceland called the presumably unlisted phone number used by the Secret Service to route calls for President Bush.  A teenager?  From Iceland?  Not that there are all that many phone numbers in the 202 area code anyway, but my favorite part of the article is how they kept this kid on the line.

Vífill claims he was passed on to several people, each of them quizzing him on President Grímsson's date of birth, where he grew up, who his parents were and the date he entered office.

 

"It was like passing through checkpoints," he said. "But I had Wikipedia and a few other sites open, so it was not so difficult really."

I seriously doubt that the Secret Service had any intention whatsoever of passing this kid on to a real West Wing staff member- they just wanted to trace the call.

Link: ABC News: Ten Dials Bush Private Number 'to Chat'.

Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » Led Zeppelin

Bob, I'm probably just a bit older than the "younger generation" you talk about (i'm 27 and just a bit too young to be Gen X) and unfortunatley I didn't discover Zeppelin until about 19.  But I do know that Zeppelin is the band that helped me realize that music could be great and reference literature at the same time.  That it could have weirdly- kind-of-too-long tracks,  like Carouselambra, and still have "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" and "When the Levee Breaks" and the others you mention.

My friend AW had a monster home theater set up in his apartment senior year, and when the Led Zeppeloin DVD set came out, I think we all had a religious awakening watching "In My Time of Dying". on.  Once, after we had all be drinking, he refused, which led to:

GR: If you don't put on In My Time of Dying, I'm not going to order us Pizza.
AW: You're going to lose this one. 

Link: Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » Led Zeppelin.

FCC way more useless than OfCom

When it's not restricting the ability of spectrum owners to use airwaves as they see fit, or stifling free expression, the Commission is bogging itself down in needless bureaucracy and partisan politicking.  As the US 700Mhz auction approaches, here comes british regularor Ofcom to show us how slow and pathetic our FCC really is. 

ink: UK's Ofcom to release spectrum for mobile television and satellite radio - Forbes.com.

The 1452-1492 MHz band spectrum will be released on a technology and service neutral basis, allowing users the flexibility to decide on the technology they will use, and the services they will offer.

<snip>

    All the licences will be tradable.

Is Facebook's Beacon Strategy to Piss us Off?

Charlene Li makes an interesting parallel to the launch of newsfeed, which I remember well, in her post about Beacon.  She notes (as I did below) that the element of control is key to success of a technology like this.*

One of my colleagues, GO, made an excellent point a few months back about the Scion- its advertising and its brand are designed to polarize.  They want you to either love it or hate it.  Pros: Boxy.  Cons: Boxy.  Brands that no one cares about can never be strong.

So think about this:
What if this launch strategy is intentional?  Piss off (nearly) everyone, get even more free press and attention and people getting scared about the feature.  Make the smallest amount of changes consistent with minimizing negative responses, thereby maximizing value provided to advertisers (read: revenue).  How's that for "agile development"?


*That is, until we have smart agents who can make correct assumptions about our preferences in these kinds of situations...but that's another story.

Who clicks on ads? And what might this mean?

I was pointed to Who clicks on ads? And what might this mean? by Nate via Jonah Keegan's ad ecologies  post.  My thoughts:

  • Agree that there is a mis-match of perception about value of ad inventory
  • Who clicks on ads is generally a far cry from the audiences that advertisers pay to reach- the impact of brand advertising is probably understated by an alnalysis of who "clicks"
  • What does this mean for site business models based on advertsising to upscale and connected audiences?  Probably advertisers looking for exposure/impressions in their demographic will do ok, but CPC or CPA models will fail very badly.
  • I still predict that within a few years major brand advertsising will be about brand relevant services which create a unique experience and allow users to connect to each other and the brand around an activity

The irony here is that it seems to come full circle to something like Facebook's disastrous Beacon technology, using people's behavior-on site and off- to create the advertising the people in their network see. 

Unfortunately, the involuntary nature of such advertising messages (or the prospect of ruining a surprise Christmas present, which is my favorite anti-Beacon anecdote to date) disturbed the notion that people should choose their causes. 

Causes- and brands and products- will ultimately find stronger support by empowering users consensually rather than sneaking up on them. 

Bush Says Iran Still a Danger Despite Report on Weapons - New York Times

Link: Bush Says Iran Still a Danger Despite Report on Weapons - New York Times.

Oh, well excuuuuuuuuuuse meeeeeeeeeee   for reading the English language and thinking, um, THE EXACT OPPOSITE.  Sigh.  Bush might as well be saying that after lengthy and not very timely study of South Park, he has concluded that Imaginationland is sending "warning signals."

I think my co-worker AC has it right:

In other words, despite the fact that they are incapable of being a threat, they are still a threat.  They are about as big a threat as...Cuba.  Or Rhode Island.

Well said.

How to Get Into...Cornell?

The Alumni newsletter of my high school alma mater, The College Preparatory School was happy to point out our ranking of 6 (by success rate) on the Wall Street journal's list of high schools with the most success getting students into Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins.  I maintain I received a top flight education there, though I am sure any high school on the Journal's list probably delivers the same.    Let's go CPS Cougars!

Take that, Bentley High School!

Here is the story: How to Get Into Harvard - WSJ.com.

Am I the only one who remembers PeoplePC?

Unfazed by the misery that sent PeoplePC into idea purgatory,  Zonbu launches bare-bones subscription laptops .

"You're going after a market that's wide open and hasn't been addressed yet," Milman said. Components prices are cheap, so it is possible for a vendor to build such a PC, he said.

Really?  Untapped?  At $279, how much are their customers really saving?  I had my last laptop for 4 years, but by the end it was in rough shape.  If you figure these customers keep their laptops for three years, that's $819 total.   You've gotta be better off financing a $1,000 laptop for three years...or buying a $500 laptop for cash.

This is to say nothing of the fact that all their value adds could all be had for free pretty easily.