[彭蒙惠英语] 真的有这样的年轻人吗?(2/3)
Growing up
Zuckerberg grew up in the well-to-do New York City suburb of Dobbs Ferry, the second of four kids and the only son of a dentist father and psychiatrist mom. He began messing around with computers early on, teaching himself how to program. As high school seniors, he and D'Angelo built a plug-in for the MP3 player Winamp that would learn your music listening habits, then create a playlist to meet your taste. They posted it as a free download and major companies, including AOL and Microsoft, noticed and offered jobs. But after graduation, the two headed to college, D'Angelo to Caltech and Zuckerberg to Harvard.
Harvard's hacker
It was old-fashioned braking-and-entering hacking that spawned Facebook---and Zuckerberg was the culprit. Harvard didn't offer a student directory with photos and basic information, known at most schools as a face book. So one night early in his sophomore year, Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard's student records and created a basic site called Facemash. Four hours, 450 visitors, and 22,000 photo views later, Harvard yanked Zuckerberg's Internet connection.
Ultimately, Zuckerberg did an end run around the administration. He set up the Facebook template and let students fill in their own information. Thefacebook.com, a sit was originally called, launched on February 4,2004. By May, thirty other schools were included, and banner-type ads for student events and college-oriented businesses had brought in a few thousand dollars.
Summer break
At the end of his sophomore year, Zuckerberg headed out to Palo Alto for the summer with his Harvard roommates, Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. They sublet a house not far from the Stanford campus.
Vocabulary Focus
mess around (phr v)--- to spend time doing unimportant or various things, without any particular purpose or plan
breaking-and-entering (adj)--- illegally forcing your way into something, especially to steal
culprit (n)--- someone who has done something wrong
Specialized terms
end run (n phr)--- 回避闪躲战术 an attempt to overcome a challenge without confronting it directly
