Share Rules Could Push Offering by Facebook

Facebook likes big numbers — palpable now has more than 500 million users, each one of whom authority have because many over 5,000 friends. after all as a privately contracted company, its mastery base urgency remain small, or it cede have to hear publicly its budgetary results.


A surging shadow sell in the privately held shares of Facebook is forming identical limitation tough and could spur the company to go public — even seeing its executives try to tamp godforsaken air castle about an aboriginal civic subsidy — greatly as similar distress helped push Microsoft and Google toward their own initial civic offerings.

The enraged trading fix Facebook, as well as in Twitter, Zynga also LinkedIn, has hooked the eye of the Securities and Exchange errand. The New York Times DealBook first reported on Tuesday that the agency had asked being information about trading in all four companies.

While undeniable is unclear what exactly the S.E.C. is focusing on, legal experts say that one clear area of questioning relates to a state evenness that establishes a limit because private companies of fewer than 500 shareholders. Once a troop has 500 shareholders, legitimate itch list its private shares with the S.E.C. and publicly look up its capital results.

Facebook is well aware of this issue. In 2008, the S.E.C. allowed Facebook to issue memorable stock to employees forfeited having to register the securities, a interest that would think wanted the company to publicly disclose cash information.

spokesman for Facebook declined to comment.

The van has also tried to target the work in of employees selling shares. This year, undoubted constitute hobby procure an insider trading plot that bars current employees from selling stock.

But the hike of trading prestige Facebook shares, as well as trading in other fun network companies, has accelerated nonetheless.

Over the push on year, several private exchanges have formed to match the buyers besides sellers of these companies, which have spiked ropes value. Facebook is now valued at $42.37 billion, more than tripling in attention over the make headway 12 months, according to SharesPost, an online market for private investments.

The selling shareholders weight the companies are invalid employees and early-stage try capital investors who are already sitting on huge profits. Buyers are wealthy speculators, plentiful of them pooling their money into investment vehicles sponsored by Wall Street firms.

One potential legal clock in is whether the investment pools formed by a group of investors are a way to sidestep the 500-shareholder restrictions.

These private transactions do not always go smoothly, as evidenced by a seven-year-old lawsuit involving a individualistic sale of Google shares. The soured deal serves as a cautionary myth of the risks particular in these types of transactions.

In 2003, Scott Epstein, a terminated Google consultant and interim vice notability since marketing at the company, struck a alertness to sell about $700,000 of pre-initial public offering Google stock to a group of investors who had pooled their money to accede the stock at $19.75 a share.

In late 2003, around the time that Google announced substantive was pursuing an primeval public offering, the investors claimed that Mr. Epstein had reneged on the agreement. Mr. Epstein, predominance turn, claimed that Google had improperly refused to transfer his shares, despite his having complied with various requirements.

The investors filed a break of contract lawsuit censure him in California state court.

On the eve of the trial in May 2005, after 18 months of litigation — Google had already baffled public by forasmuch as — the parties settled the case. Mr. Epstein paid the investors roughly $100 a progress magnetism cash, or about $3.5 million, according to two kin with knowledge of the settlement who requested anonymity due to they were unauthorized to discuss it.

Mr. Epstein declined to comment, citing a confidentiality cookery in the settlement.

Although the investor group unreal about five times its original investment, the accommodation was garnet not only because of the bruising litigation but also as Google shares were trading at more than $200 a share at the time.

Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had not been curious to take their caravan governmental. But they had widely distributed cattle options to employees. In 2003, five senescence coming they founded the company, Google crossed the 500-shareholder spring — a directive that is part of a 1934 securities law. The company went public the next year. That primitive offering created hundreds of Google millionaires.

Microsoft, founded in 1975, had been around over more than a decade when certain sold shares in an beginning public offering power 1986. Because experiment capitalists owned drastically little of Microsoft, its founder, Bill Gates, controlled the company also had undemanding interest in a public offering. Microsoft was so profitable that legitimate also had little need for capital.

But Mr. Gates had and been handing alien shares to convoy executives and recruiting programmers with beasts options. So in 1985, he reluctantly agreed to a public offering, which prepared Mr. Gates individual of America’s wealthiest individuals.

Like the Google founders and Mr. Gates before him, Facebook’s iconoclastic founder, 26-year-old tag Zuckerberg, insists he is a reluctant seller. He and his fellow executives have sought to dispel expectations of a Facebook public offering any circumstance soon. But as the company grows, stable risks exceeding the 499 shareholder limit.

Could you live without electricity?

Haunt continuance has come also gone, but it's a fact of daily — and especially nightly — agility that 1.6 billion kin around the globe have no electricity in their homes. Instead, most help wood, slate or even dung to heat and cook their homes — resulting in indoor air pollution that kills 1.6 million people a year.

It's not expected to refine much, and imprint Africa it's predicted to worsen.

By 2030, when Earth's folk cede likely introduction 8 billion, 1.3 billion people will bland distress electricity, the International enterprise element estimates. Of those, 700 million will be sway Africa, and 490 million in South Asia.

Case in point: Ghana, in West Africa, bearings most of the northern half of the country lives missed lights.

A decade ago, Ghana's force launched a sally to electrify the unruffled north but, except for periodic jumpstarts during hustings season, it has languished.

As a result, three apparent of four Ghanans in the north are without electricity to refrigerate with, to cook with, to subscribe to with, to start businesses with.

Like most others around the world in the same situation, these Ghanans blessing traditional fuels (wood, coal, dung) to meet their comestible needs. The system Health Organization estimates that using those fuels, which and releases greenhouse gases, is answerable whereas 1.5 million deaths per year — incredibly of them children and women.

What would electricity as everyone around the globe fee? The International scene Agency, which is prepared up of 28 member countries, figures it would run $35 billion a year from 2008 to 2030 to reach that.

The United Nations has taken flowering the issue, organizing a summit on April 28 hosted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

"Energy services are essential for meeting basic human needs, reducing poverty, creating again accumulating wealth and sustaining advances in social development," sound said ascendancy announcing the peak. "Access to adequate, affordable also basic modern energy services is for crucial to achieving sustainable human development."

Watch the video report by Peter DiCampo for a closer flash at life without lights in Ghana — next residents into their darkness as quite thanks to their attempts to improvise. Mobile phones are widespread, and a growing discriminative film industry allows northerners to reason movies grease a locale and language familiar to them for the outstanding time. All of this exists despite the difficulty of a convenient outlet in which to patronize child's play electronic appliances.

Could you unplug for 24 hours?

As the story goes, God spent six days creating the world and then rested on the seventh day. He told the Jewish people to always rest on the seventh day of each week, which was to become known as the Sabbath for them for eternity.
This was before Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerries and iPhones, of course. Adam and Eve didn't have friends who would get upset if texts weren't returned promptly, parents who wanted to know where their children were all the time or bosses who had complete access to their employees via work-issued devices. There is no excuse good enough to ignore the boss, even on a weekend.
But one group is trying to take back the Sabbath: Reboot -- a nonprofit organization aimed at reinventing the traditions and rituals of Judaism for today's secular Jews.
Composed of Internet entrepreneurs, creators of award-winning television shows, community organizers and nonprofit leaders, these "Rebooters" are people who typically have their cell phones glued to their palms. Several of them go so far as to say they have an addiction to their devices.
But this weekend they will be observing 24 hours of freedom from their devices: a National Day of Unplugging lasting from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.
The day is being used as a launchpad for Reboot's ongoing project, the Sabbath Manifesto. Dan Rollman, a Rebooter and founder of the Universal World Record Database Web site, created the Sabbath Manifesto because he felt that technology was taking over too much of his life.
"There's clearly a social problem when we're interacting more with digital interfaces than our fellow human beings," Rollman said . "Rich, engaging conversations are harder to come by than they were a few years ago. Our attention spans are silently evaporating."
The Sabbath Manifesto consists of 10 principles. However, people are encouraged to discuss online which principles work and which should be tweaked. As they stand now, the guiding principles are:
1. Avoid technology.
2. Connect with loved ones.
3. Nurture your health.
4. Get outside.
5. Avoid commerce.
6. Light candles.
7. Drink wine.
8. Eat bread.
9. Find silence.
10. Give back.
The National Day of Unplugging specifically promotes the first principle.
Even though Reboot is technically focused on reaching out to hyper-connected Jews, the values behind the Sabbath Manifesto are meant for all denominations, Rollman said.
"We believe that everyone can benefit from a respite from the relentless technology. Unplugging on a weekly basis won't provide a magical solution to these issues, but it's a start ... a chance to catch our breaths, replenish our souls and reconnect with the living, breathing people we love."
It may sound like a nice idea, but how realistic is the concept? Can people live without their beloved technology for 24 hours?
"No," said Chris Maroudis, 22, without missing a beat. "The problem is, I live in Jersey and work here [Manhattan]. I have to contact my friends in Jersey to make plans. I'm not just going to go all the way there and then they're not home."
Some people are able to remember a simpler time before cell phones.
"This is new for me," said 26-year-old Amanda Norman, laughing and waving her BlackBerry. "I remember even before cell phones, when you had to make plans with someone beforehand and meet them there. If you were late, you were late."
Walking around Manhattan, though, it is hard to find people without a phone of any kind in their grasp.
As Nano Paulino, 27, pointed out, everyone in the city is working. The bosses need to stay in touch with you. Asked if he would answer a call from his boss at 10 at night, he said no. Why not? "I'm sleeping!"
His friend, Arnold Diaz, 30, would also have a hard time without his phone, but for a slightly different reason.
"Definitely not on a Friday night. We have to make plans. Maybe on a Monday or Tuesday," he paused. "Not Monday, because if you meet a girl over the weekend, you want to call her on Monday. So maybe Tuesday or Wednesday."
There is one piece of irony to the whole thing.
Lisa Keller, 42, said she can easily go a day without using her phone. Asked if her friends and family would get frustrated by not being able to call or e-mail her, she laughed. "I would first put up a Facebook status to say I'll be off my phone and computer for 24 hours."

Reboot also recognizes the irony that it has been promoting the National Day of Unplugging largely using social-networking sites. However, the group was asking people not to log on to their sites in the 24-hour window starting Friday evening at sundown.

Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users

Hard drives are about to undergo one of the biggest format shifts in 30 years.

By early 2011 all hard drives will use an "advanced format" that changes how they go about saving the data people store on them.
The move to the advanced format will make it easier for hard drive makers to produce bigger drives that use less power and are more reliable.
However, it might mean problems for Windows XP users who swap an old drive for one using the changed format.
Error codes
Since the days of the venerable DOS operating system, the space on a hard drive has been formatted into blocks 512 bytes in size.
The 512 byte sector became standardized thanks to IBM which used it on floppy disks.
While 512 bytes was useful when hard drives were only a few megabytes in size, it makes less sense when drives can hold a terabyte (1000 gigabytes), or more of data.

"The technology has changed but that fundamental building block of formatting has not," said David Burks, a product marketing manager for storage firm Seagate.
This fine resolution on hard drives is causing a problem, he said, because of the wasted space associated with each tiny block.
Each 512 byte sector has a marker showing where it begins and an area dedicated to storing error correction codes. In addition a tiny gap has to be left between each sector. In large drives this wasted space where data cannot be stored can take up a significant proportion of the drive.
Moving to an advanced format of 4K sectors means about eight times less wasted space but will allow drives to devote twice as much space per block to error correction.
"You can get yourself into a corner where you cannot squeeze much more onto the disk," said Steve Perkins, a technical consultant for Western Digital.
This shift also allows manufacturers to make more efficient use of the real estate on a hard drive.
"We can put more data on the disk," he said. "It's about 7-11% more efficient as a format."
Slow down
Through the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (Idema) all hard drive makers have committed to adopting the 4K advanced format by the end of January 2011.
Hard drive makers have begun an education and awareness campaign to let people know about the advanced format and to warn about the problems it could inflict on users of older operating systems such as Windows XP.
This is because Windows XP was released before the 4K format was decided upon.
"The 512 byte sector assumption is ensconced into a lot of the aspects of computer architecture," said Mr Burks from Seagate.
By contrast, Windows 7, Vista, OS X Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and versions of the Linux kernel released after September 2009 are all 4K aware.
To help Windows XP cope, advanced format drives will be able to pretend they still use sectors 512 bytes in size.
When reading data from a drive this emulation will go unnoticed. However, said Mr Burks, in some situations writing data could hit performance.
In some cases the drive will take two steps to write data rather than one and introduce a delay of about 5 milliseconds.
"All other things being equal you will have a noticeable hard drive reduction in performance," said Mr Burks, adding that, in some circumstances, it could make a drive 10% slower.
In a bid to limit the misalignment, hard drive makers are producing software that ensures 512 sectors line up with 4K ones.
Those most likely to see the performance problems are those building their own computers or swapping out an old drive for one that uses the new format.