Apple Plans New Spaceship-like Campus 279
itwbennett has a story that might answer the question of what Apple is doing with the billions they have in the bank. "Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday presented plans for a new Apple campus to the Cupertino City Council. The office building will look 'a little like a spaceship landed,' said Jobs. It will also be just 4 stories tall, is big enough to house all 12,000 Apple employees (with room for growth), and will generate its own energy." Keep reading to see the riveting town council meeting.
Now he's building a mothership. This will end well (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do I have a feeling that the Steve Jobs story is going to end with him and a large number of followers drinking arsenic-laced kool-aid in an effort to travel to the alien home planet of Klatlun?
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We would ask that you cease and desist your activity, and would like to remind the reading public that Jonestown residents were consumers of "flavor-aid" an inferior imitation product. John Doe III General Counsel
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Been there, done that, got the T-shirt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GCHQ-doughnut.jpg [wikipedia.org]
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Who puts a lake/pond in the middle of the shortest distance across the circle??
PEW! PEW! (Score:2)
So at this new facility at the Mindhead campus, do the doors futuristically automatically slide open with a "whoosh"?
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No, they all open with the Mac "Yawn" sound.
Re:Now he's building a mothership. This will end w (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now he's building a mothership. This will end w (Score:5, Funny)
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The Jonesville compound drank Flavor Aid. Yet everyone always associates this with Kool-Aid because no one likes Flavor Aid.
Flavor Aid deserves to be associated with arsenic. Give them the credit they deserve!
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The Jonestown massacre was carried out with Cherry and Grape Flavor-Aid poisoned with Valium, chloral hydrate, cyanide, and Phenergan.
Re:Now he's building a mothership. This will end w (Score:4, Funny)
Nope.
There's no profit in that.
Fortnightly sacrifices on the giant altar at the center of his gold-clad city, however, are more likely.
Save him having to fly around to get on organ waiting lists.
Re:Now he's building a mothership. This will end w (Score:4, Insightful)
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If that's your feeling, you should seriously ask for a sense of humour.
You'd think so; but the OP was modded +5 INSIGHTFUL!!!
More like iDoughnut (Score:3)
The circular shape is reminiscent of the UK's GCHQ "Doughtnut" [cryptome.org] building. GCHQ is their equivalent of the NSA, they do sigint for the Queen.
Actually... (Score:2)
All those glass walls and it's circularish shape remind me more of another British-imagined building. [wikipedia.org]
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He looks sick (Score:2)
In that video he does not look good.
Re:He looks sick (Score:5, Interesting)
I still have to give him props for actually showing up to the meeting. He could have easily sent the summer intern or any number of other people involved with the project. Instead the CEO of a Forture 50 company shows up to a town hall meeting to discuss the new building they're building.
And regardless of what company is building this (and peoples opinions of that company) this actually looks like a pretty cool 'green' endeavor. Less wasted space on parking, more trees, less energy consumption. I wish more companies thought like this.
Re:He looks sick (Score:5, Informative)
He's actually always done this. When Apple has business with the City of Cupertino, he's the one that shows up to talk to the city council, not some PR flack or a lawyer.
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Probably to lay weight (in a good way, given the way most companies behave.) The city council likely responds better to the CEO of a company talking to them directly instead of lawyers or interns or whatever.
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In that video he does not look good.
He clearly looks like someone with a nutrition problem. On the other hand I've seen obese people his age who don't look exactly healthier.
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Steve Jobs has liver disease and pancreatic cancer. The weight loss is probably due to the treatments he has to undertake.
Re:He looks sick (Score:4, Interesting)
Jobs goes EPCOT on us (Score:3)
Seems like Steve saw Walt Disney's old video about the true vision of EPCOT and decided to make it happen.
He was in good form, despite looking poorly. The inane comments from the city council members couldn't have helped.
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Most legislators in our County just stay quiet to avoid asking dumb questions at public budget meetings. Then again, some do not, and do look at the very least sound ignorant to anything going on in the IT world.
Wouldn't that be why you ask questions, because you are ignorant about something?
Can't deny Apple knows how to market (Score:2)
I like how at 7:06 in the video the artists rendition of the elevation view of the new building includes the obligatory iPod-wearing, air guitar playing youth in the foreground. I wonder if the city council is getting ad revenue for this event.
makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
I won't comment on the aesthetics of the building, but it seems a no brainer for a company like Apple to build a thoroughly modern building like this.
At least I don't see Apple going out of business anytime soon and they can practically write a check for the whole thing. The money being an opportunity cost that will pay back over the longer term with less building energy costs and having everyone in one place / no lease costs for other locations.
Only downside might be if they ever did need to sell it or lease space to others in the future. (this doesn't seem structured like say the Sprint Nextel campus in Overland Park Kansas .. where the buildings were restructured for other companies use after the original occupant didn't need them anymore for various reasons.
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they can practically write a check for the whole thing
From finance.google.com, financials, balance sheet
"Cash & Equivalents 15,978.00" "In Millions of USD"
Hmm. A building that costs more than 15 billion dollars?
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If investors (who haven't seen a dividend from AAPL since 1995!) see that they just blew their 15B war chest on a new building, at the same time that Google, Microsoft, and many others are nipping at their iPhone-centric heels, they will start heading for the exits. Maybe Steve Jobs is comfortable with a stock price back around the 100/share range, but I think he would have a lot fewer "followers" if that ever happened. I wouldn't be surprised if they used corporate bonds to pay for a large part of the new
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Why would it be hard to re-purpose sections of the building for use by other companies? It seems like this will be, more or less, general-purpose office space. You could as easily have an accounting company, a law firm, or the corporate headquarters of virtually any small/medium company in a part of the building.
The building is a ring, right? So, a few degrees (or if you prefer, a few tenths of a radian) of the circumference could be 'partitioned off', given its own entrance and be leased out.
What's so hard
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Only 12.000? (Score:2)
nice work if you can get it... (Score:2)
Apple doesn't produce tons of products. And they became the industry giant relatively quickly in the past ten years, mainly through App Store purchases. They make a profit on iPhone/iPad/iPod sales, but 30% of the top on all Apps, songs, movies, books, etc. is where it is at. And they don't need massive staff to collect money on other people's products.
Hey, waitaminute! I thought personal computers and teh interarwebs were democratizing forces that made middlemen obsolete. That's a pretty good trick Apple!
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Middlemen is plural.
Apple is singular.
But frankly, they've done a better job than all the middlemen combined who came before them - better services at a better cost to the producer.
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... lol.
No.
Apple makes money hand over fist all on what they're actually making; the 30% on "other people's products" is nice and all, but isn't even in the same league.
The iTunes store is like 5% or so (maybe a few points higher, but not a lot) of their revenue -- and while it probably doesn't have a big margin since they don't have to go out and like, build physical things? Their margins on the things they actually make are huge.
Something like two thirds of their PROFIT comes from their actual iThing prod
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Even though Mac market share grew 28% last year, Mac OS X profits didn't grow that much, and still only account for 20% of the company's revenue. If hardware accounted for the majority of their revenue, you'd see it here.
http://www.cultofmac.com/apple-earns-3-5-times-as-much-profit-on-ios-and-os-x-than-microsoft-does-on-windows/93282 [cultofmac.com]
Apple states that 75% of their revenue comes from iOS related sales. They're lumping in iPhone hardware with App Store/iTunes purchases. But again, before the App Store, they ha
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No they do NOT lump in hardware with software purchases.
It's under Other Music Related Products and Services (3)
Footnote (3):
(3) Includes sales from the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore in addition to sales of iPod services and Apple-branded and third-party iPod accessories.
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q211data_sum.pdf [apple.com]
Re:Only 12.000? (Score:5, Informative)
Hardware sales of iOS, not software sales.
Go look at Apple's own numbers:
iPod - $1.6B
iPhone - $12.2B
iPad - $2.2B
Music/Apps (which is other) - $1.6B
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q211data_sum.pdf [apple.com]
Re:Only 12.000? (Score:4, Informative)
You're absolutely right: IOS related sales is the vast majority of their revenue.
That does not, *at all*, mean "iTunes Store". It could mean, "revenue from our products, AND the iTunes store" -- but the vast majority of the profit in that category is their products. IPhone, iPad, etc.
Getting precise break outs is impossible, because Apple doesn't specifically release a profit per product, but they do give certain numbers.
http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/25/ios-enables-71-of-apple-profits-with-platform-products-make-up-93-of-gross-margin/ [asymco.com]
for instance. See where "music" and "software" are, compared to "iPad", "iPhone", "iPod" combined?
You're doing some really weird math where you're saying, "before the store" verses "after the store" and equating the fact that they'd have explosive growth TO profits from the store itself. You're missing the part where they've also had record after record after record breaking quarters selling the actual *products*, iThings -- at a high margin, with huge profits.
Again: no. You're imagining that Apple is first and foremost a media and content delivery hegemony, and you're wrong. They're the biggest music seller in the world right now, but they still make most of their money, hands down, on their devices.
Profits due to "IOS" is not "app store": not even kind of. For apps, they've paid out 2.5b to developers total so far -- TOTAL. For the rest of the content, they don't lump iTunes Store (music, movies, etc) into "IOS" because its NOT part of the IOS profit category. You can get all that content (except books) on the Mac, and they have never really given (at least as long as I've been listening to their financial conference calls) really specific details about how much of their running profit comes from the content stores.
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I don't want to repeat the same answer over again. Look at my above answers. I have looked at their financial statements, and Apple's direct statements.
The vast majority of their revenue is tied to iOS.
There are three times as many OS X devices as iOS devices. The OS X devices have a higher profit margin. With more hardware sold, and a higher profit margin, that *should* be where the majority of their revenue comes from, if hardware drove their revenue.
The fact that 75% of their revenue comes from the iOS d
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The financial statements only show iOS division, which lumps together App Store purchases and hardware. There aren't hard numbers published on that.
I made a case above for why I think App Store/iTunes accounts for more than the hardware side. You have fewer devices at a lower profit margin, and yet more revenue. And revenue skyrocketed for the company overall when they introduced App Store purchases. This isn't rocket surgery.
Steve Jobs has said publicly that is where the majority of their revenue comes fro
Re:Only 12.000? (Score:5, Informative)
Are you reading the same Q2 2011 statement [apple.com] I'm reading? In it Apple shows their revenue by products.
(3) Includes sales from the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore in addition to sales of iPod services and Apple-branded and third-party iPod accessories.
(4) Includes revenue recognized from iPhone sales, carrier agreements, services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPhone accessories.
(5) Includes revenue recognized from iPad sales, services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPad accessories.
(6) Includes sales of displays, wireless connectivity and networking solutions, and other hardware accessories.
(7) Includes sales from the Mac App Store in addition to sales of other Apple-branded and third-party Mac software and Mac and Internet services.
From the financial statement, Apple has clearly separated App Store revenue from iOS device revenue. It's not rocket surgery but it's rather simple accounting and in black and white. Steve Jobs has said that the iOS ecosystem is what had made iOS devices successful; however, in terms of financial contribution, the hardware devices make far more money.
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I'm pretty sure you haven't read any of Apple's financial statements.
Things you got wrong:
1. There are 3 times as many OS X devices as iOS devices - Apple sold 3.7 Million CPUs last quarter, but sold 32.3 million iOS devices last quarter
2. Apple doesn't release profit margin per device, so you can't know that iOS devices have a lower profit that OS X devices. Much less state this as a fact.
3. Steve Jobs stating anything like what you're stating.
You might actually want to go read this:
http://images.apple.c [apple.com]
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Funny, many analysts - and Apple themselves - have said that the App Store runs at "slightly better than break-even." From your hyperbolic claims, you'd think that they were minting money with the app stores and barely breaking even on their hardware sales, which is in fact exactly opposite from reality.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20008540-37.html [cnet.com]
The vast majority of Apple's revenue comes from hardware & device sales. Whether you assign App store sales to "Itunes" or "Software" in this chart [businessinsider.com], it
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30% of a small number is another small number.
They sell 1 iMac, and bump their revenues by $2000+ dollars. They sell 1 99-cent app, and bump their revenues by $0.30.
Note that that 30 cents is not "profit" to Apple, it is revenue. They still have to pay for administration & maintenance of the online store (disk space, server space, network connections), staffing the app reviewers, paying credit card processors, etc. Apple have publicly stated that they run the app store at "slightly above" break-even
Try looking at AAPL's financial statements (Score:3)
Apple doesn't produce tons of products. And they became the industry giant relatively quickly in the past ten years, mainly through App Store purchases.
App Store purchases are a very minor percentage of Apple's business. You only have to look at Apple's financial statements to discover this.
They make a profit on iPhone/iPad/iPod sales, but 30% of the top on all Apps, songs, movies, books, etc. is where it is at.
You might want to consult Apple's financial statements before saying something that is demonstrably wrong. In 2010 Apple's total combined music and software sales (including 3rd party and their own) totaled just 11.5% of Apple's revenue. Even if the margins are ridiculous, it still just just a small portion of their business. By comparison Apple's NET profit over the
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App Store purchases started a few years ago, but Apple launched the iPod and iTunes about 10 years ago.
And really, it was just the past few years they exploded. Look at this:
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Apple_(AAPL)/Data/Market_Capitalization/2001/Q2 [wikinvest.com]
Note that their massive growth really started in 2005. The iMac had nothing to do with it. In fact, there are rumors that they will completely drop Mac OS X and move all devices to iOS to shift more focus to App Store purchases.
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The spike started in 2005 with music sales, which is exactly my point. Apple takes 30% of the top of other people's content, and that is where most of their revenue comes from. They don't need a huge staff to make money off other people's products.
Apple doesn't profit very much from their App/Music/Book/Video/etc. stores. These are primarily created to provide an added value to their hardware products.
Apple lists their numbers. For example, they have sold 15 billion songs (that's $5 billion in revenue (not profit) since 2005) and have paid $2.5 billion to app developers (that's $830 million in revenue (not profit) since 2008.
Apple takes in more than those two stores combined, in pure profit, every four months or so.
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As of May 2011, there are three times as many Mac OS X devices out there as there are iOS devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems [wikipedia.org]
iOS devices are sold more frequently today, so iOS devices may in time overtake OS X devices. But you often don't replace your laptop as often as your phone. And there have been years and years of OS X device sales before iOS came around.
And you're claim that iOS accounted for 67% of all revenue in January matches up with the 75% I saw as of May.
You'r
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Citation most definitely needed for this. The majority of their revenue may be coming from iOS devices, but it is the *device sales,* not the *app store,* that is accounting for the vast majority of their revenue.
10 billion plus apps downloaded. 200 million iOS devices sold to date. That's roughly 50 apps per device. Some year-old numbers [techcrunch.com] suggest that 75% of the apps in the app store are paid apps - so let's assume t
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The Onion? (Score:2)
I was expecting -- nay -- hoping to see the onion news logo in the video.
Energy. . . (Score:2)
Jobs mentioned using natural gas to generate their energy. This being Apple, I'm a bit surprised they aren't planning to cover the roof with PV panels, or perhaps use the big empty space in the middle of the building to build a solar-thermal tower, with a field of mirrors surrounding the buildings. Maybe throw up a few of the big Wind Turbines to augment the solar.
That would, however, interfere with them making the rest of the campus be greenspace with lots of trees, which they want. Still, at least the PV
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http://www.apple.com/environment/ [apple.com]
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I don't know if they actually care about *being* environmentally friendly, but I'm pretty sure that they like to at least *appear* to be environmentally friendly, because, I believe, a lot of their customers are concerned about the environment, and are supporters of solar and wind power.
I could be wrong, I admit, but that's the distinct impression I get.
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You might want to justify YOUR baseless statements.
Even Greenpeace says they're the best tech company in terms of eliminating 'dangerous' chemicals, and only dings them on communicating policy:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/electronics/how-the-companies-line-up/ [greenpeace.org]
"Apple does best on the toxic chemicals criteria, where it scores most of its points. "
Somehow, that puts Apple in 9th place - best in practice where it actually matters, poor in clear communications.
Design: lush forest, reality: drab carpark? (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks very nice with the stunning scenery of a forest. Really brings out the building. As we all know though, in reality the scenery of such designs usually gets switched from the beautiful parklands, lakes or forest in to a giant car park with a tree and a puddle in the corner.
It's the surroundings which make a good building into an amazing design, and it's the surroundings which most often fail new builds.
Hopefully Apple can get it right.
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On a trip in Korea I remember seeing a new hotel being built in between another pair of 10 story buildings...the artists rendition posted in front of the site showed it sitting in an open green field with no other buildings around it...in reality, 2/3rds of the building wasn't visible at all from the street.
Re:Design: lush forest, reality: drab carpark? (Score:5, Informative)
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If Steve Jobs wants a lake and a forest around his building, then you can be damn sure he'll have a lake and forest around his building.
I think you are thinking of Steve Harper [www.cbc.ca], not Steve Jobs...
Free WiFi??? WTF?? @13:19 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Great Spin by Jobs (Score:2)
By joking around that it will look like a landed spaceship, no one would ever suspect that it was a space-time ship ready to take Steve jobs back home where he can be given a new cancer free body and then return with a new range of gadgets to hawk.
Interesting Highlights (Score:5, Interesting)
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Apple's already across the street, I doubt traffic would get too much worse since this place is right next to the freeway. Though at the moment Apple is spread out all over that area and now they'd be concentrating all those people into a couple blocks. Luckily I don't need to drive past Homestead and Wolfe all that often :D.
Time to short AAPL stock ? (Score:2)
If history has any lesion for us it is that when a company decides to build a statement building it frequently coincides with the decline of the company. Mr. Cringley talked about this few months back
http://www.cringely.com/2010/12/edifice-complex/ [cringely.com]
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"If history has any lesion for us"...
Would that make this a sore subject???
Walled Garden (Score:2)
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So he's building the corporate version of Wonko the sane's house?
Apple planning to do fundamental science? (Score:2)
So, now we know... (Score:2)
...what those glass-cutting machines were for. [googleusercontent.com]
You'd think that by now people would learn how it goes with Apple rumors. [misterbg.org]
Gosh, this thing actually seems to make sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually when a company announces plans for a whizbang new campus, it's bad news for the stockholders.
I have a friend who many years ago worked for a high tech company that planned a beautiful new Utopian campus. For various reasons they were forced to reduce the size of the project. They decided to house management and marketing at the luxurious new campus and stick the engineers miles away in a big box full of cubicles. As for the engineers, keeping management and marketing out of their hair on a day to day basis easily made up for having to work in a giant cubicle farm. The downside was that management lost touch and began demanding silly things and not taking engineering advice seriously. The subsequent poor performance of the company turned the showcase campus into an expensive fiasco. The campus was abandoned a few years later when the company was forced to sell out to a competitor.
It sounds like Apple is doing the opposite here, bringing people who have to work together in a very nice environment. I'll bet there'll be ideas generated and knowledge transferred on strolls through this campus that wouldn't have happened in a formal meeting that required a drive across town. This really looks like a case for what architects often claim but seldom achieve: making buildings that work for the people who use them.
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I wonder if Steve Jobs is drawing off his experience with Pixar and how much their company changed when they moved into their campus in Emeryville.
Pollution! (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope they have done an environmental impact report for all of the Smug they will be adding to the atmosphere.
Human alchemy (Score:3)
That's no building. I see through your nefarious plan, Jobs. You're building a giant transmutation circle. You'll fill it with 13,000 souls, perform horrifying experiments on them, and then sacrifice them all in order to create a Philosopher's Stone for yourself. You've pushed the boundaries of medical science and human alchemy is all that's left to you now...
Come on, people. Of course I'm not serious. Or am I...?
The Double Standard... (Score:2)
So they're going to build a new building? Great!
Of course, several questions loom over such a project... and nobody asked him anything related. For instance, what will happen with the tons and tons of refuse generated from the destruction and cleanup of the existing building and asphalt? Since they are going to generate their own electricity, will they fall under EPA rules or will they be exempt since it isn't sold? How much fuel and water will be stored on site - and will it be located next to the apar
panopticon (Score:2)
The description of the new building reminds me very much of the Panopticon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon [wikipedia.org]
From the Wiki article: "The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the incarcerated being able to tell whether they are being watched."
Like this, but with bigger windows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Presidio_Modelo.JPG [wikipedia.org]
Employee? Prisoner? Who's to say?
Next up: blue track suits (Score:2)
Carte Blanche (Score:2)
#StandardOil2.0
This is a TERRIBLE design. (Score:3)
This building is completely not built on a human scale. It places offices and services far from eachother. It's seemed DESIGNED to make people drive.
Take the giant ring and compress it into a 20-40 story dome. Not only would it result in better interconnection between offices, cafeterias, and such, but it would bemore energy efficient (a dome has the least amount of surface area to exchange heat with the outside).
It would use less land, leaving more space for parkland, a farm, solar plant, whatever you want to use it for.
Instead of building a huge fucking parking garage you could place it next to a Caltrain station, and encourage people to use Caltrain to get to work instead of driving.
Hell they could build it in Santa Clara by the Caltrain station there (there's a ton of poorly used space on the north side of it). This is a stop for not only Caltrain (San Jose San Francisco), but also Capitol Corridor (San Jose Oakland Sacramento), and ACE (San Jose Livermore Stockton).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeomorphism [wikipedia.org]
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Only in the world where you are doing seriously unkind things to your penis, man.
You could have said cock-ring and I would have been with you.
But... a penis? No. Ow.
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Of course, if the idea is just to build something that will take Jobs back to his home planet
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And only one toilet. [youtube.com]
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The Pentagon -- while somewhat labyrinthine -- is actually fairly easy and fast to get around in. Once you get your bearings! For such a huge building, you don't generally have to spend a lot of time walking.
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I actually don't have a problem with Apple. I've owned an iPhone before I bought an Android (I had a 2G, so it was upgrade time and I felt like something different), and I still own and use an older iBook G4. But a spaceship shaped building just fits in so perfectly with the cult-image, I couldn't help but think it.
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But a spaceship shaped building just fits in so perfectly with the cult-image
Yes, because so many cults have been housed in spaceship-shaped buildings.
BURN THE CASTLE! (Score:3)
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there will be unwarranted rectal probing for all visitors?
i KNEW I should have read the new Terms of Service agreement.
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iKNEW iShould have read the new Terms of Service agreement
There. FTFY
That was no spaceship! (Score:2)
That was an alien lifeform. [memory-alpha.org]
Although... The creature WAS rather partial to creating apples out of thin air.
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Right ... so it's officiall Groppler Jobs now?
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