While I certainly wouldn't defend Instagram's ridiculous $1bn valuation, I should point out that although a company might not be making profit, nor would ever make profit in its current form; that doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't value in the company.

Nor does it mean that the company isn't an attractive takeover target.

A larger or more established company can make use of technology or a customer base in a way that the original developer cannot exploit to make profit.

This is perfectly enshrined in capitalism.

Instagram weren't bought out by a pension fund or investment group looking to garner long term profits from the company, they were bought by a large existing social networking player with ridiculous amounts of cash lying around whose only long term profitability lies in innovation (think how myspace didn't innovate/improvie/evolve quickly enough and died out inversely fast).

Though the price tag is off, I think Instagram itself is a good acquisition for FB.

I personally suspect that those cracks are caused by tidal forces from the Earth's gravity acting on different densities of material on the moon. Given what we know about how the moon formed, it doesn't have enough dense radioactive material to have a hot core after 4 billion years, nor does the Earth apply sufficient tidal energy to directly cause volcanism (think Io). I'm going to expect this to be debunked pretty soon.

I also have done this as part of a university computer vision course in 2006, and Apple gets a patent on it based on work done in 2010?

Sometimes it just appears that the American patent system is rather protectionist. Which, as any economist will tell you, is a self-defeating mechanism.

Trying to get a TDWTF thread going on reg? Must be Friday.