I would not expect any of the words you mentioned to come up in a thesaurus under "black". How is Word to know when I type in "black" that I mean "a black person", and not "black" in it's literal sense? Nine out of ten times I'll be writing something like, "the night was black", or "the kitten was black as night".
Careful there, automatically using a color to characterize a race or any other group of people will get you going down a road you don't want to travel.
On Computers in the Classroom * Whenever I point out the dubious value of computers in the schools. I hear, 'Look, computers are everywhere, so we have to bring them into the classroom.' Well, automobiles are everywhere, too. They play a damned important part in our society, and it's hard to get a job if you can't drive. In fact, cars count for more of our economy than do computers. But we don't teach automotive literacy.
I don't know about the rest of you, but at my high school, Driver's Education was a graduation requirement. I think the analogy between cars and computers is astute: Every employer you will go to for an interview after high school will assume you know how to drive, the same way they will (soon) expect you to know your way around basic computer applications. You can't be productive if you're on the phone to the helpdesk every time your monitor comes unplugged from the back of your machine, or you kick the CAT5 cable out of the wall and start screaming that the network is down. People need to know the basic functions and workings of computer hardware and software to be a productive member of a company today.
Well, it did say in the article that they were currently 'in talks' with advertisers and with a 'potential space tourist' who would pay them $15 million to take him/her up.
However, this makes me wonder two things:
1) Where do they plan on placing advertising? It doesn't seem like billboard-type ads on the side of the space station would get much exposure to our mostly earth-bound consumer market.
2)How many people can they find who are willing to pay $15 million for a trip to Mir? I think that market would dry up fairly quickly.
They had better come up with some long term revenue generating plans, and quick, or Mir just might meets it's fate of burning up in the atmosphere on the way back to Earth!
You are absolutely right that comparable values are important. However, any serious buyer will have done a comparative market analysis and will know what other similar sites are selling for, and will take this into consideration when they are considering the purchase.
The most important thing is to be familiar with the same information they used to arrive at their "expected" price (what they thought they would have to pay for your site based on comparable sales). If you have the same knowledge they do about these comparables, you can find ways to show how your site is unique and/or better than the others which recently sold, hopefully convincing the buyer that these differences add a significant amount of value.
All of the things mentioned here are important in determining your asking price for the page, and since it sounds like you did your research to reach a price of $250k, then this is what you should ask for.
But what the website is WORTH comes down to the basic laws of economics. No matter how much money it makes or doesn't make, how much time or money you have invested in it, etc., your website will only ever be worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Your task now is to find suitable figures and/or information to convince the potential buyer to purchase at your named price. If you can make them realize the value of the labor that you invested, actual capital expenditures, etc., you should have a good case.
I find it interesting that the issue seems to be centering around the comment about picking up boys on Polk street, when it appears that the teacher was upset before this comment was posted. The poster says:
"Thank god for teacher review, which I have heard Brown is trying to shut down."
This sure makes it sound like the teacher was already taking action before this comment even came up. And of course people are going to become more upset & start saying worse things about you if you start to threaten their right to do so. I think that it will be difficult for this teacher to find a specific claim in any of the postings that will be able to be considered libel. No one is claiming these opinions to be fact, and it's been said over & over that the webmaster cannot be held liable for the postings of others on his site. This guy would be better off suing the specific students who made the comments which he takes issue with.
I can understand the need to have real human test dummies, in a way. I once heard that the reason so many drunk drivers walk away from accidents unharmed is due to the use of crash test dummies. The dummies are not able to "tense up" at the moment of impact like a normal human would in a crash situation. Thus, they safety features built in to cars are most effective on people who remain relaxed throughout the entire crash. Since alcohol is a depressant, it actually helps you relax your muscles in a situation like this, and you're more likely to survive! NOTE: This is not an encouragement to drink & drive to increase your saftey.:) But it does lead to the conclusion that if we're going to make cars that are safe for real people, we need to test the safety features on real people to get accurate information.
I have to say, I work for a company whose website is certified by TRUSTe, and when the certification was explained to us, we were told simply that this meant that TRUSTe had read and reviewed our privacy policy to be certain that it met Online Privacy Alliance (OPA) guidelines, did some "ghost shopper" calls to our customer service team to be sure we followed our policy, and periodically checked in to make sure we were still upholding it. We were never told that they would be able to punish and/or threaten our site. What may be at issue here is the public's misinterpretation of what TRUSTe's "trustmark" actually represents. If you go to www.TRUSTe.org, and check out "How we protect your privacy", there is nothing in there about checking the strength of the security of the site, simply that the site discloses what it's security measures are.
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I would not expect any of the words you mentioned to come up in a thesaurus under "black". How is Word to know when I type in "black" that I mean "a black person", and not "black" in it's literal sense? Nine out of ten times I'll be writing something like, "the night was black", or "the kitten was black as night".
Careful there, automatically using a color to characterize a race or any other group of people will get you going down a road you don't want to travel.
I don't know about the rest of you, but at my high school, Driver's Education was a graduation requirement. I think the analogy between cars and computers is astute: Every employer you will go to for an interview after high school will assume you know how to drive, the same way they will (soon) expect you to know your way around basic computer applications. You can't be productive if you're on the phone to the helpdesk every time your monitor comes unplugged from the back of your machine, or you kick the CAT5 cable out of the wall and start screaming that the network is down. People need to know the basic functions and workings of computer hardware and software to be a productive member of a company today.
Well, it did say in the article that they were currently 'in talks' with advertisers and with a 'potential space tourist' who would pay them $15 million to take him/her up.
However, this makes me wonder two things:
1) Where do they plan on placing advertising? It doesn't seem like billboard-type ads on the side of the space station would get much exposure to our mostly earth-bound consumer market.
2)How many people can they find who are willing to pay $15 million for a trip to Mir? I think that market would dry up fairly quickly.
They had better come up with some long term revenue generating plans, and quick, or Mir just might meets it's fate of burning up in the atmosphere on the way back to Earth!
You are absolutely right that comparable values are important. However, any serious buyer will have done a comparative market analysis and will know what other similar sites are selling for, and will take this into consideration when they are considering the purchase.
The most important thing is to be familiar with the same information they used to arrive at their "expected" price (what they thought they would have to pay for your site based on comparable sales). If you have the same knowledge they do about these comparables, you can find ways to show how your site is unique and/or better than the others which recently sold, hopefully convincing the buyer that these differences add a significant amount of value.
All of the things mentioned here are important in determining your asking price for the page, and since it sounds like you did your research to reach a price of $250k, then this is what you should ask for.
But what the website is WORTH comes down to the basic laws of economics. No matter how much money it makes or doesn't make, how much time or money you have invested in it, etc., your website will only ever be worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Your task now is to find suitable figures and/or information to convince the potential buyer to purchase at your named price. If you can make them realize the value of the labor that you invested, actual capital expenditures, etc., you should have a good case.
Good luck!
I find it interesting that the issue seems to be centering around the comment about picking up boys on Polk street, when it appears that the teacher was upset before this comment was posted. The poster says:
"Thank god for teacher review, which I have heard Brown is trying to shut down."
This sure makes it sound like the teacher was already taking action before this comment even came up. And of course people are going to become more upset & start saying worse things about you if you start to threaten their right to do so. I think that it will be difficult for this teacher to find a specific claim in any of the postings that will be able to be considered libel. No one is claiming these opinions to be fact, and it's been said over & over that the webmaster cannot be held liable for the postings of others on his site. This guy would be better off suing the specific students who made the comments which he takes issue with.
I can understand the need to have real human test dummies, in a way. I once heard that the reason so many drunk drivers walk away from accidents unharmed is due to the use of crash test dummies. The dummies are not able to "tense up" at the moment of impact like a normal human would in a crash situation. Thus, they safety features built in to cars are most effective on people who remain relaxed throughout the entire crash. Since alcohol is a depressant, it actually helps you relax your muscles in a situation like this, and you're more likely to survive! NOTE: This is not an encouragement to drink & drive to increase your saftey. :) But it does lead to the conclusion that if we're going to make cars that are safe for real people, we need to test the safety features on real people to get accurate information.
I have to say, I work for a company whose website is certified by TRUSTe, and when the certification was explained to us, we were told simply that this meant that TRUSTe had read and reviewed our privacy policy to be certain that it met Online Privacy Alliance (OPA) guidelines, did some "ghost shopper" calls to our customer service team to be sure we followed our policy, and periodically checked in to make sure we were still upholding it. We were never told that they would be able to punish and/or threaten our site. What may be at issue here is the public's misinterpretation of what TRUSTe's "trustmark" actually represents. If you go to www.TRUSTe.org, and check out "How we protect your privacy", there is nothing in there about checking the strength of the security of the site, simply that the site discloses what it's security measures are.