10/25   how does Microsoft and Facebook sit around and magically decide
        that Microsoft now owns 1.5 percent of Facebook?  And that 1.5
        percent is worth X.  and now Facebook is worth 15 billion?  The more
        I think about it, the more I think the entire global economy is
        a consensual hallucination.
        \_ Valuation is hard.  Let's go shopping!
        \_ facebook decides they have 'X' shares.  Microsoft offers to pay
           Y dollars for .015 of them.  Therefore facebook is valued at
           Y * 100 / .015.
           Y dollars for 1.5% of them.  Therefore facebook is valued at
           Y / .015.
           \_ it still seems like someone is making shit up and asking
              the rest of the world to believe them.
              \_ Fixed the math error, can't believe nobody caught it.
        \_ How does anything in the world have a value/price?  Take an
           economics/finance class.  It's not a secret.
        \_ I know this, but do you really think a website of intangible
           shit is really worth 15 billion?
           \_ I don't, but Microsoft, who seems to know how to make money, does
           \_ The whole web is intangible.  Is it worthless?  Is Google worth
              $0?  No.  Sites like FB have tremendous numbers of people
              logging in everyday.  Reaching that many people, and often
              having self-provided info on them has tremendous advertising
              value.  Do you still think FB is intangible shit?  What about
              Google?
        \_ Do a little search on DCF (Discount Cash Flow).  If you pay
           1 billion for a company, you need to calculate how much time it
           would take for it to return your 1 billion dollars. That way you
           can calculate what your rate of return is.  Look at Ebay's
           recent write down of skype. That's a textbook example of CEO
           stupidity.  Ballmer is probably not thinking straight.  His desire
           to beat google and apple is clouding his thinking.  If you want
           to invest in companies that understand DCF and are not swayed by
           the latest "fad", look at oil companies like XOM and VLO.  XOM
           management will crunch numbers to death before making an investment.
           If the numbers doesn't make sense they will not invest in it.  That
           is why they're the company with the largest market cap in the world.
           That's why they will be the first $1 trillion dollar company.
           In 5 years, we'll see if Google overpaid for youtube or MSFT
           overpaid for Facebook or you overpaid for VMware.  -the oil man
           \_ You aren't paying enough attention to the details of the deal.
              M$ bought the only part of the company that is worth anything
              (the ad revenue) for $250M while preserving the fiction that
              FaceBook is worth $15B, assuaging Zuckerber's ego. Why anyone
              still does business with M$ is beyond me. Have any of their
              business partners not been screwed by them?