Negotiation Strategies

Negotiation Strategies

A summary of three types of strategies.

Flight Nibbling

Ask for a little bit more at a time, and keep nibbling away – at small things. Obviously small things accumulate. Airline example:

Airlines usually overbook their seating when possible; on a plane that seats 120, they can sell 122 tickets and just about get away with it, because there is a roughly 3% chance that people don’t show up. (Exactly why they oversell I shall explain below.)

Anyways, consider that you’re on the plane and they are at capacity. The attendant announces that they need a seat for someone that actually showed up and began offering a seat on the next flight… with compensation of course. So the deal is that you get on the next plane, which leaves tomorrow, and plus a bonus of $100 for your troubles. If you want the offer, you can take it by raising your arm. Nobody took it. Then they increased to $200. And still, nobody budged.  Slowly, with $100 at a time, it got to $800. Only then, since you calculate the price to be about fair for your troubles, would you take it.

Should you stop here? No. You should nibble. How?
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Hacking Android APK Tutorial

Hacking Android APK Tutorial

Tutorial on hacking an Android APK file, which is an android app file, we decompile, hack it, and recompile. I will go through the setup and basic commands.

Introduction to APK format

Apps in Android have an extension of .apk format – which is basically a special .zip container that is signed with a certificate. The signer could be somebody like Google Apps Store. The idea is that modifying the .apk file means the signature is invalidated, to prevent installation of modified apps.

The main line of defence from installing malicious APK files is to make sure they are downloaded from the Google Apps Store. But once the APK (app) is in the users’ hands, it is unprotected. Most premium apps can be rooted, so ripping apps is easy.

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PHYS 234

PHYS 234 (Quantum Physics 1) Course Review

Velocity got a 3D printer. This is like a dream come true. I’ve always wanted to play with one and I have so much things on my mind to make. In order to spend more time on this, I think I might drop PHYS 234 (Quantum Physics 1). Well, was thinking of dropping it anyways (see below), this just gives me an additional reason. I’ve always had an interest in physics, always looked up to Richard Feynman for his passion and ability. I wanted to do a physics major but it seems that it is not practical at all, and there is really no use for it, skill wise and application wise. Start ups are hard with a physics major.

Makerbot Replicator 2 has arrived!
Makerbot Replicator 2 has arrived!

And on that note, PHYS 234 is just taught really poorly. It’s as if professor does not speak in English – teaching the course as if we already know the material. Here is a sample of it:

Reason 1 for dropping: Useless lecture notes.

I’m a person who likes to challenge thy self. I like working hard to figure things out (provided I have a genuine interest). But my interest in this course really boils down to sitting in lecture in a general state of confusion, then having to read the textbook and figure out how to do the assignment, all by myself.

His notes on the blackboard are so bad, that its value is near nil to me. I rarely refer to it because I don’t understand where everything falls into place – since he hardly ever writes descriptive words.
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