Duff

I think that the root of this issue is the stupid Google policy of not distinguishing any variation of your address if a '.' character is in there -- until someone registers it. People get confused and try to login.

So if your address is [email protected], you can send email to (or login with) [email protected] or [email protected].... at least until someone registers [email protected]!

I was an early beta GMail user have a reasonably common first initial last name GMail address. I probably get 3-5 password reset attempts per month. I also routinely received a variety of interesting misdirected emails. Everything from someone's VPN credentials, a US military EEOC complaint, invitations to a stag party in Ireland, a video of a paratransit bus flipping over (intended to be sent to an investigator), to girls modelling underwear for boyfriends.

I'd interpret this as someone with high income/low net worth.

Think someone from a random middle class background that got good grades an above average public college. Basically, if he fucks up, he's bankrupt.

The WASPy types with Harvard MBA's benefit from their social safety net.

We're not talking about retail investors getting fleeced by big traders. We're talking about $100M positions held by professional traders who were told to go pound sand by the exchange.

The questionable nature of many aspects of Facebook's business are not new -- an IPO investment in Facebook is by it's nature a speculative investment in the future. So was Netscape, the company that started the dotcom boom.

But unlike the good old days in the 90's, today we find ourselves in a new world where for-profit exchanges who handle billions of trades a day suddenly cannot handle an IPO. You have institutional investors stuck with seemingly illiquid positions in Facebook panicking to close positions poisoning the well and creating an atmosphere of ambiguity and fear.

You can't roll out the "investment is a long term endeavor" bunkum when the entire business model of NASDAQ-OMX and NYSE-EuroNext is now to operate a liquid market. The NASDAQ utterly and completely failed to operate the market correctly, and traders who expect to be able to trade quickly were hosed. Facebook, the traders, and the retail investor all suffered because of NASDAQ's incompetence.

I had a similar experience, except I put my order in at 11 and was able to successfully cancel it at 12:30 as the order queue was processed. It took 20 minutes to process the cancellation, which Ameritrade can typcially do in less than a second.

Go to Home Depot. You can now make PayPal mobile payments.

You're going to use your bank for payments because you already have low-cost ways to make payments already (ie. checks, debit and credit cards).

But... there are millions of people in the US who operate outside of the banking system. They are mostly poor or working off the books in some form. For these folks, the idea of buying a $100 topoff card at a gas station to have access to mobile payments makes sense. How do I know this? Becuase the same folks are paying $5 for a disposable debit card today.

How many coins were created daily 3 years ago?

Drivers always have the authority to eject passengers. If they get resistance, they call the cops.

I'm not sure when they would clean a bus though. I'd rather have my bus driver drive than stop to pick up rubbish.

User count is only one dimension of the value that Facebook has. The user connections are arguably the more important dimension.

As Facebook figures out more ways to be a more pervasive force in people's lives, they'll have the ability to multiply the revenue they receive on a per-user basis.

Perhaps you are stuck in some weird loop due to attending school in different states, or have attended really lousy schools.

When i was in elementary school in NYC, we learned about ancient civilizations and NYC history in 4th grade -- the ancient part was kicked off with a field trip to the Egyptian artifacts at the Met.

In high school in upstate ny, we studied global history and current events from grade 9 through 11. The Chinese portion sucked -- we basically covered the opium wars though the cultural revolution, but we studied many aspects of global history.

Not really. Microsoft wants to make significant money on it's investment in developing operating system software. Samsung wants to make money on it's manufacturing operations.

You have an extra layer of overhead with a Microsoft device vs. an iPad. Plus, because Samsung, HTC, etc are all making the devices, they cannot come close to the economies of scale that Apple does.

Apple's model is very clever. As a niche player until recently, they had to be more clever to survive. Look at their product lines -- they all share lots of components.

EBay horror stories are usually transactional based on buyer/seller conflict. (including fraud) In those cases, Paypal is just the party stuck in the middle.

On the positive side, at least there is a chance of an amicable resolution with PayPal. 10 years ago, a sketchy buyer would be sending you a fake money order.

Sen. Schumer is in many ways the senatorial equivalent of a personal injury lawyer who advertises on the back of a bus.

He's a good politician, but a master self-promter. He focuses on hot issues to get cheap name recognition like the iPhone 4 "antennagate" issue, airport baggage fees, caffinated malt liquor and similar nonsense.

The tone of the article implies that TED is somehow suppressing the dissemination of this speech because it's content is somehow too controversial to handle.

I declare it inane because the speech described by the article isn't very controversial at all.