Having known Mark personally, I can assure you that even if he made nothing on facebook for some reason, it wouldn't be long before he came up with another great (and lucrative) idea and was offered a boatload of money for it.
Heck, I remember when he and a friend created Synapse in 2003 and was offered something in the high 6-figure range to work on it for someone for a few years. If he hadn't turned that down he'd never have been able to do facebook.
Bottom line -- don't doubt him. After all, he seems to be following in the path of another Harvard student who didn't finish school there either.
I'd like to know how they arrived at a 2 billion dollar asking price. That's probably the craziest valuation since google's IPO.
So since GOOG is now trading approximately 4x their IPO price (~$375 as opposed to an IPO of $85 per share), you're saying that facebook should be worth actually around 8 billion dollars? Or are you saying that the facebook value of 2 billion is as crazy high as GOOG's at IPO was crazy low?
simply a liquidy viscuous substance that shoots from a small opening at the tip
Judging by current replies to this post as well as its moderation (+2 Interesting), am I the only one that has my mind in the gutter? I have to believe that the OP was trying to be at least a little suggestive...
Yeah, that day was a bad day. There were about 15 of us working on our final projects (that were 2 or 3 days late by this point) when the network shut down. Actually, come to think of it, it probably was a good thing because we finally got to sleep for a few hours.
The network was great my freshman year ('99-'00). Part of that may be because I was coming from a dial-up connection, but that year was really the year that Napster started to take off. Latency was very low (pinging
In either my sophomore or junior year, they started having troubles meeting the demand placed on their bandwidth. As a result, they implemented some sort of bandwith shaping device which killed the latency (I'd go from a 10 ping to a 1000 ping and back again) and also drastically reduced the bandwidth on anything but HTTP/FTP downloads. As much as I hated it, I did understand that it was a college network and that the priorities should be for educational use.
Senior year the latency and bandwidth got more reasonable, but it never reached the levels it was my senior year. However, it didn't really matter too much as we had moved to playing Halo non-stop against a room a few floors below us.
If there's a clearer way to say "stop panicking everytime we see something", I'm not sure what it is.
This is like when you can't find your glasses only to realize that you're already wearing them!
The sad thing is that there are some people, usually scientists, who simply don't understand that in sensitive matters like this, you really need to stress that it doesn't warrant panicking without hiding it deep within a definition. Color coding it yellow doesn't help much either. It needs to be clearer that the threat from an asteroid such as this one is still near zero and does not need to make headlines.
<disclaimer> Not sure if you intended to be sarcastic or not. If you did, then I apologize.</disclaimer>
Um....x^2 + y^2 is NOT equal to (x+y)(x-y).
If you did it correctly:
x=y
x^2=yx
x^2-y^2=yx-y^2
(x+y)(x-y)=y(x-y)
And at this point you can't divide by (x-y) because we've already established that x=y so x-y is 0, and you can't divide by zero.
no cause Apple only gets about 15 cents to every dollar if Im not mistaken while the record company/artist gets the rest.
You had a typo there. It should have read:
no cause Apple only gets about 15 cents to every dollar if Im not mistaken while the record company/RIAA gets the rest.
Do any parts of a cometary nucleus contain pristine material that have been untouched since the creation of the comet during the Solar System's early history?
It's nice to know that one of those questions just got answered (so it's time to update the wikipedia article:)
Actually we know the answer to the third question as well: No! Duh...we just rammed a probe into it!
Maybe it's just me but the term "water ice" makes me cringe.
It makes me think of summer! (see below)
I understand they need to differentiate between other materials that could be termed "ice".
Exactly...it's ice, but we want to make sure you know it's H2O ice, not CO2 ice or some other form of exotic ice...although exotic things are usually pretty hot!
Why not just say "frozen water"?
And what's the difference between frozen water or water ice? Don't they mean the same? To me, "water ice" is similar to an italian ice, or basically a flavored (but usually not very sugary) slushee-style dessert. I'm sure people on/. have heard of "Rita's Water Ice." I try and get one every time I'm in SE Pennsylvania in the summer.
Could that be interpreted as something other than H2O as a solid?
No, but can water ice be interpreted any other way either? I say toe-may-toe, you say toe-mah-toe (of course I would be right and you would be wrong in that case).
Re:That reminds me... (warning: a little offtopic)
on
Pluto Probe Launches
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· Score: 1
I remember that game!...
Christ I'm old.
I remember the game too, although I played it on my Tandy 1000. But I'm only 23, and I wouldn't consider myself old...
To me, it says "where AMD and Intel chips are BOTH sold, AMD is the solid preference amongst consumers"
Please explain how 52.5% is a "solid preference." Nowhere in the article does it mention Intel's share, but assuming it's around 45% (have to remember Apple!), I don't see a 7.5% swing being a "solid preference."
Would you rather have an engine that puts out redlines at 6,000 or 12,000 RPM? I forgot to mention, the 6,000 RPM motor is a 5 liter V8, the 12,000 RPM motor is a 60 CC weedwacker motor.
I'd rather have the 12,000RPM motor in my weedwacker. I just imagine the 5 liter V8 would be a little cumbersome trying to get the areas around my fence.
Eg. from 0-15 I slept with 3 women, from 16-30 I slept with 30, so, by extension, from 31-45 I should sleep with 300 (much to my wife's chagrin).
If our data set is too small, extrapolations tend to produce equally absurd results.
Small data sets do lead to absurd extrapolations, but incorrect data will further invalidate the extrapolation. Now, if we took the real numbers, you would get the following:
From 0-15: 0 women
From 16-30: 0 women
By extension, from 31-45, you will sleep with... 0 women! I think we can all agree that in this case two data points is sufficient for an accurate extrapolation.
My favoured option would be 4, but with a second link to the 'The Geekery Times' home page from the words 'The Geekery Times'.
So you would have the entire sentence hyperlinked? I think that is a big no-no. Also, you should try to avoid putting hyperlinks that go to different places adjacent to each other. I don't see any need to link to "The Geekery Times" home page as you can be sure there will be links to the home page on the report itself.
It's been years since OoT launched, and it continues to be the only game for which I stood in line before the store opened. I have never seen that kind of reaction for a game again.
I'm a big Nintendo (and especially Zelda) fan, but I can assure you the reaction for Halo 2 was an order of magnitude greater than it was for OoT.
Also, if the cost of distributing your advertisement only to the people who would potentially buy it, like only advertising "feminin products" to women, only advertising new cars to people with a record of buying new cars every so often, and only advertising Nintendo DS games to people with Nintendo DSes (like me), everybody would win.
While I agree with keeping the "feminin products" ads for the women, I disagree with your other two examples. There's really two parts to successful advertising -- the first part is to get people who are in the market for your type of product to purchase your brand. This would go hand-in-hand with your suggestion of only marketing DS games to DS owners, etc. However, the other part of successful advertising is to entice people to buy things they didn't know they wanted. If I don't own a DS, but I see an ad for a DS game that looks really exciting, I might be inclined to buy a DS so I can play the game. If you went with your logic, we would no longer have the "As seen on TV" type items, and the world could use more useless gadgets like that!
I wouldn't want to sit in a rolled-over Escalade any longer than I absolutely had to...
I wouldn't want to sit in any rolled-over vehicle for more than a second or two, since everyone knows that a rolled-over vehicle will spontaneously burst into flames and explode.
You can fire anyone at anytime, even if it is a bad reason. Don't confuse illegal firing with that of a bad reason firing. Illegal firing, is firing based on a protected class, such as those protected under Title VII, whistle blowing statutes and the like.
When I wrote my original post, I was considering using "protected" instead of "bad" to describe the reason. I probably should have used it, as it is more accurate.
Anyways I might be wrong as I did not go to Harvard.
Cute.
So if you can cite a Washington case, where someone was fired for a "bad" reason, such as playing a competitor's game then I would be happy to look at it.
I'm sure someone with better access to that sort of data could find a case. One reason they aren't very common is that most people who are let go "without cause" (or at least without good cause) are given a severance package which (if you accept it) prevents you from suing the employer over your termination. Often these severance packages are for more money than someone would hope to recover in a lawsuit (especially after making consideration for legal fees, time spent, and the possibility you may not win), so even if a person believes they may have a case, they'll just settle for the severance package.
In Washington, Nintendo can fire you because you were playing an Xbox a little too much even without a contract.
While that may be possible, please don't confuse so-called "at will" employment (where either the employee or employer can break the employment agreement at any time with or without cause) as a free pass to fire people for any reason. Generally, the "with or without cause" clause means they can fire you for a good reason (tardiness, insubordination, etc.) or no particular reason (they are disbanding your division, cutbacks, etc). What they can't do, is fire you for a bad reason, especially for things such as discrimination or whistle-blowing. For a little more detail, check out Wikipedia's article on the subject.
On the other hand, there's a company out there (I won't name it because it would make me sound like a fanboy)... That is why you see games like Pokemon or Nintendogs...
The suspense is killing me! What company could you possibly be thinking of?
I am in favor of random companies paying game developers to make their games more genuine by including real world items and getting nothing in return for it other than the illusion that it is somehow helping their sales.
I wholeheartedly agree. I enjoy that PGR3 for the XBox 360 has real advertisements on the walls of the racetrack. This isn't just trying to plaster advertising wherever you can place it -- it mimicks real life, where the ads are plastered everywhere on the racetrack. The same is true for sports games -- I'm always disappointed when the ads on the scoreboards of the MLB parks are of made-up companies. I'd much rather them be the real advertisements that can be found at the ballpark today.
What I don't like, and, thankfully, haven't really seen yet, are advertisements that don't really fit with the game. I don't want to be running around WoW and see an alienware ad. I also don't want to order Dominos or Pizza Hut from EQ, but if I'm playing Madden 2005, I want my players to be wearing Nikes/Reeboks or whatever the shoe company of the month is. I want the ball to be a Wilson. These things add realism and make the game company more money to boot. Even if this doesn't in turn lower prices for the games, it at least gives more money to the game companies who will hopefully invest it in better games.
I'm pretty sure MS is not selling the 360 to retailers for 399$, and in turn the retailers are selling it for the same price. I'm sure there's probably a 10-50% markup.
I'm pretty sure you're right on the first thought, and pretty sure you're dead wrong on the second. MS is probably selling the core system to retailers for about $290 ($10 off the MSRP, or about 3% markup), and the premium system for about $380 ($20 off the MSRP, about 5% markup). Retailers make next to nothing on sales of the system itself, but they probably make $10-$20 on each controller they sell, $5-$10 on each game, etc.
Also, the total cost to a retailer for the Xbox360 (after counting transportation, shelf space, store operating costs) is probably right about what the MSRP is, so it's likely that retailers aren't making anything on the sale of the system.
Slashdot Mirror
Heck, I remember when he and a friend created Synapse in 2003 and was offered something in the high 6-figure range to work on it for someone for a few years. If he hadn't turned that down he'd never have been able to do facebook.
Bottom line -- don't doubt him. After all, he seems to be following in the path of another Harvard student who didn't finish school there either.
So since GOOG is now trading approximately 4x their IPO price (~$375 as opposed to an IPO of $85 per share), you're saying that facebook should be worth actually around 8 billion dollars? Or are you saying that the facebook value of 2 billion is as crazy high as GOOG's at IPO was crazy low?
Judging by current replies to this post as well as its moderation (+2 Interesting), am I the only one that has my mind in the gutter? I have to believe that the OP was trying to be at least a little suggestive...
The network was great my freshman year ('99-'00). Part of that may be because I was coming from a dial-up connection, but that year was really the year that Napster started to take off. Latency was very low (pinging In either my sophomore or junior year, they started having troubles meeting the demand placed on their bandwidth. As a result, they implemented some sort of bandwith shaping device which killed the latency (I'd go from a 10 ping to a 1000 ping and back again) and also drastically reduced the bandwidth on anything but HTTP/FTP downloads. As much as I hated it, I did understand that it was a college network and that the priorities should be for educational use.
Senior year the latency and bandwidth got more reasonable, but it never reached the levels it was my senior year. However, it didn't really matter too much as we had moved to playing Halo non-stop against a room a few floors below us.
This is like when you can't find your glasses only to realize that you're already wearing them!
The sad thing is that there are some people, usually scientists, who simply don't understand that in sensitive matters like this, you really need to stress that it doesn't warrant panicking without hiding it deep within a definition. Color coding it yellow doesn't help much either. It needs to be clearer that the threat from an asteroid such as this one is still near zero and does not need to make headlines.
<disclaimer> Not sure if you intended to be sarcastic or not. If you did, then I apologize.</disclaimer>
(x+y)(x-y)=y(x+y)
Um....x^2 + y^2 is NOT equal to (x+y)(x-y).
If you did it correctly:
x=y
x^2=yx
x^2-y^2=yx-y^2
(x+y)(x-y)=y(x-y)
And at this point you can't divide by (x-y) because we've already established that x=y so x-y is 0, and you can't divide by zero.
You had a typo there. It should have read:
no cause Apple only gets about 15 cents to every dollar if Im not mistaken while the record company/RIAA gets the rest.
It's nice to know that one of those questions just got answered (so it's time to update the wikipedia article :)
Actually we know the answer to the third question as well: No! Duh...we just rammed a probe into it!
It makes me think of summer! (see below)
I understand they need to differentiate between other materials that could be termed "ice".
Exactly...it's ice, but we want to make sure you know it's H2O ice, not CO2 ice or some other form of exotic ice...although exotic things are usually pretty hot! Why not just say "frozen water"?
And what's the difference between frozen water or water ice? Don't they mean the same? To me, "water ice" is similar to an italian ice, or basically a flavored (but usually not very sugary) slushee-style dessert. I'm sure people on /. have heard of "Rita's Water Ice." I try and get one every time I'm in SE Pennsylvania in the summer.
Could that be interpreted as something other than H2O as a solid?
No, but can water ice be interpreted any other way either? I say toe-may-toe, you say toe-mah-toe (of course I would be right and you would be wrong in that case).
I remember the game too, although I played it on my Tandy 1000. But I'm only 23, and I wouldn't consider myself old...
Please explain how 52.5% is a "solid preference." Nowhere in the article does it mention Intel's share, but assuming it's around 45% (have to remember Apple!), I don't see a 7.5% swing being a "solid preference."
I'd rather have the 12,000RPM motor in my weedwacker. I just imagine the 5 liter V8 would be a little cumbersome trying to get the areas around my fence.
Small data sets do lead to absurd extrapolations, but incorrect data will further invalidate the extrapolation. Now, if we took the real numbers, you would get the following: ... 0 women! I think we can all agree that in this case two data points is sufficient for an accurate extrapolation.
From 0-15: 0 women
From 16-30: 0 women
By extension, from 31-45, you will sleep with
Then you get pages that look like this. There is nothing more annoying (IMHO) than seeing an entire paragraph hyperlinked. While I agree it is rarely done (and most of the time it is an accidental omission of the closing tag), it does make it very unreadable. In fact, I'm guessing most of you skipped this entire post because of the hyperlink.
So you would have the entire sentence hyperlinked? I think that is a big no-no. Also, you should try to avoid putting hyperlinks that go to different places adjacent to each other. I don't see any need to link to "The Geekery Times" home page as you can be sure there will be links to the home page on the report itself.
I'm a big Nintendo (and especially Zelda) fan, but I can assure you the reaction for Halo 2 was an order of magnitude greater than it was for OoT.
While I agree with keeping the "feminin products" ads for the women, I disagree with your other two examples. There's really two parts to successful advertising -- the first part is to get people who are in the market for your type of product to purchase your brand. This would go hand-in-hand with your suggestion of only marketing DS games to DS owners, etc. However, the other part of successful advertising is to entice people to buy things they didn't know they wanted. If I don't own a DS, but I see an ad for a DS game that looks really exciting, I might be inclined to buy a DS so I can play the game. If you went with your logic, we would no longer have the "As seen on TV" type items, and the world could use more useless gadgets like that!
I wouldn't want to sit in any rolled-over vehicle for more than a second or two, since everyone knows that a rolled-over vehicle will spontaneously burst into flames and explode.
Please hand in your geek card immediately!
(For those of you who haven't played Civ 4, the voiceovers are done by Leonard Nimoy, a.k.a. Spock.)
This must be why my girlfriend always wins an argument!
When I wrote my original post, I was considering using "protected" instead of "bad" to describe the reason. I probably should have used it, as it is more accurate.
Anyways I might be wrong as I did not go to Harvard.
Cute.
So if you can cite a Washington case, where someone was fired for a "bad" reason, such as playing a competitor's game then I would be happy to look at it.
I'm sure someone with better access to that sort of data could find a case. One reason they aren't very common is that most people who are let go "without cause" (or at least without good cause) are given a severance package which (if you accept it) prevents you from suing the employer over your termination. Often these severance packages are for more money than someone would hope to recover in a lawsuit (especially after making consideration for legal fees, time spent, and the possibility you may not win), so even if a person believes they may have a case, they'll just settle for the severance package.
While that may be possible, please don't confuse so-called "at will" employment (where either the employee or employer can break the employment agreement at any time with or without cause) as a free pass to fire people for any reason. Generally, the "with or without cause" clause means they can fire you for a good reason (tardiness, insubordination, etc.) or no particular reason (they are disbanding your division, cutbacks, etc). What they can't do, is fire you for a bad reason, especially for things such as discrimination or whistle-blowing. For a little more detail, check out Wikipedia's article on the subject.
The suspense is killing me! What company could you possibly be thinking of?
I wholeheartedly agree. I enjoy that PGR3 for the XBox 360 has real advertisements on the walls of the racetrack. This isn't just trying to plaster advertising wherever you can place it -- it mimicks real life, where the ads are plastered everywhere on the racetrack. The same is true for sports games -- I'm always disappointed when the ads on the scoreboards of the MLB parks are of made-up companies. I'd much rather them be the real advertisements that can be found at the ballpark today.
What I don't like, and, thankfully, haven't really seen yet, are advertisements that don't really fit with the game. I don't want to be running around WoW and see an alienware ad. I also don't want to order Dominos or Pizza Hut from EQ, but if I'm playing Madden 2005, I want my players to be wearing Nikes/Reeboks or whatever the shoe company of the month is. I want the ball to be a Wilson. These things add realism and make the game company more money to boot. Even if this doesn't in turn lower prices for the games, it at least gives more money to the game companies who will hopefully invest it in better games.
I'm pretty sure you're right on the first thought, and pretty sure you're dead wrong on the second. MS is probably selling the core system to retailers for about $290 ($10 off the MSRP, or about 3% markup), and the premium system for about $380 ($20 off the MSRP, about 5% markup). Retailers make next to nothing on sales of the system itself, but they probably make $10-$20 on each controller they sell, $5-$10 on each game, etc.
Also, the total cost to a retailer for the Xbox360 (after counting transportation, shelf space, store operating costs) is probably right about what the MSRP is, so it's likely that retailers aren't making anything on the sale of the system.