jpancake

I'm sure I'll be modded into oblivion for this, but, oh well.

I'm really curious, and not trying to be snarky: how old are you?

It's especially poetic given that the HotSpot vm that was purchased by Sun, and developed by Anamorphic ('Animorphic' in some articles) Systems, was originally designed to run Smalltalk / Self.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HotSpotVm

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-...

I don't think there's a good reason for them to be publicly held, at all.

Due to their well-documented culture problems (I'm in games in SF, and only know one person who went to work there ... he's 24 and wanted to 'get rich' ... everyone else stays far, far away), and resulting inability to grow through acquisition, I'm not sure what they actually need an additional billion+ dollars for. To make new games, I suppose, but outside of Cityville and Words with Friends, they haven't been able to make the Farmville lightning strike at will.

All of these new titles cost money, and more money to market, and they're missing far more often than they're succeeding.

It just doesn't seem sustainable, to me.

I think the IPO is chance for the funds that invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the company to profit-grab, pure and simple.

All of Zynga's established properties are trending down. The attention (DAU/MAU) new Zynga titles get does not last as long as it used to:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/27/towerdefense/

They're spending more to market new titles:

http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-11-26/business/30446059_1_zy...

As a result of the above two factors alone, their net profit is shrinking fairly dramatically. This is very similar to Groupon (also "profitable" at the time of IPO), and you can see how they're doing for yourself, here: http://www.google.com/finance?q=GRPN (-25% since launch, in case you don't feel like clicking)

Using the 'it's profitable' logic would mean that investing in Beanie Babies Corp while they were making money hand-over-fist would've been the height of financial prudence.

Sure the VCs who have funded the company up to this point are going to make tons of money. But that's their model: stoke interest in a business, take profit, and get out.

People admit it, but usually there's kind of a 'haha, yes, I have no life' disclaimer that goes along with the acknowledgement.

Cool?

The VCs would seem to be betting otherwise.

It's 1999 all over again.

I work, tangentially, in the games industry. A reasonably well-known programmer, who had a monster hit in the Atari days, works in my office. The topic of Zynga came up on an internal list recently. He had this to say:

"Zynga continues to set precedents in the high-tech field. This ranks up there with a friend of mine who, while working at Zynga suffered a heart attack without warning one day (in his 40s).

In the 3 days he was in the hospital, his boss was replaced and his new boss reorganized the department. The new boss called my friend on the hospital room phone and fired him.

(Yes, there was a lawsuit. And yes, Zynga settled while – of course – denying any wrongdoing.)

But seriously... Who does that sort of thing?"

Having used MacOS exclusively from roughly 93-96, it was my experience that, at that point, it was certainly not a viable alternative to Windows, especially after Win95 was released. The only industries that would touch Mac in those days were publishing/pre-press/design, and that was due to Quark being only available on the Mac. I started using Photoshop on Windows maybe in 97 and it was shocking how much better it ran on Win95.

Lord help you if you tried to use a web browser while running another application.

For the record, the majority of Timbuk2's bags are made in China. It's only their custom bags that are made in the city.

Seriously. Add the Sunset and the Richmond to that, too. Unfortunately the plastic bag ban was only for "large markets" (eg Safeway, Whole Foods).

Firebug (getfirebug.com)

Hacks a lot for all the negative karma, hackers. Hack you, too. >:(

Hey dude, a hacker over here. Too bad about the hacker bailing on your hackhouse, are you having open hacking tryouts so I can hack your gibson before hacking my way into your heart? I'm [email protected]; hack back at me if you want to get together & hack!

Happy Hacking!

$0

I live and work in San Francisco, and according to you I should be paying $620 a month in state income tax. According to my payslip I pay ~$420 (awesome) a month, $60 of which is for state disability insurance.

http://www.dogensangha.org/video.htm has a couple (slightly tilted) videos explaining the basic posture of zen meditation.

Your body needs to be in an alert or awake position in order for you to be able to settle into yourself. Sitting on a couch will just make you sleepy.

It's also hugely important not to expect anything out of your meditation. "Having trouble focusing" is only a symptom of what's actually going on. Meditation won't make it go away; but, if you stick with it, you'll likely gain insight into the causes of it, and hopefully find more productive ways of dealing with it.

I think it's cute that you skirted my main point.

A car isn't a necessary commodity. Food is. Housing is. Cars aren't. For the poorest Americans, the necessary acts of eating and securing shelter consume the vast majority of their income.

Secondly, what makes you think that someone who's driving a 'lowered SUV with giant chromed rims' can't afford it? Implicit racial bias? Why did you pick this example? Why not something closer to home: Did every douche in Silicon Valley with a BMW pay for it outright?

You may also try reading it like this: only the fifth richest have money to save. Due to the inflexibility in cost of necessary commodities (food, housing) one may mistakenly read that as 'the poor trying to live like the rich,' but that is far from the case.

Let's assume that you spend $200 a month (a fairly meagre amount) on food; that would be $2400 a year. And you also spend $600/month on rent (a fairly low/middling amount). That's $7200 a year. Combine the two and you get $9600.

That's already >90% of the TOTAL income of the lowest bracket. The lack of savings among the poorer members of our society has less to do with trying to 'live like the rich' than with 'not being able to do so.'

Dogen's insight (and the core of Soto Zen teaching) is that practice and realisation (here, 'enlightenment') are fundamentally the same thing. So, the act of sitting IS enlightenment itself.