The pair alleged that Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea in creating Facebook, ended up settling, and then appealed over the terms of the settlement; a judge denied their request. But if their long-fought legal battle with Facebook proved anything, it's that the JFK Jr.-lite Winklevoss brothers never quit, even when everyone — including judges — thinks they should. Take that, Serbia! (Photo by Getty Images)

The news is hardly bad news for the Winklevoss brothers and ConnectU's third cofounder, Divya Narendra. Court papers say the three will get "millions" of dollars in cash as well as stock in a startup too popular with mainstream America's millennial generation to fail. (The Winklevosses were fighting the settlement after they discovered that the Facebook common stock they would receive was worth less than they supposed.) Plus, there's still that shot at gold.

Hruska noted that O'Connor's other blog, Ivygate, had called the twins "spoiled bitches that tried to lay one on the invincible Mark Zuckerberg and failed." We don't see the problem with hiring "spoiled bitches" to work at NonSociety — they'll fit right in with Allison! Had Hruska really been cutting, she'd have asked how Julia Allison's latest BFF, Randi Zuckerberg — older sister of the man the Winklevosses accused of stealing ConnectU's code for Facebook — would feel about the hire.

One would think they would have gotten a proper valuation on the shares before agreeing to take them as payment. That in itself suggests that the twins, who majored in economics at Harvard, weren't paying attention in class.

And if they have some other evidence of brains, it wasn't on display for the Globe. Their coash, Ted Nash, tries to argue that they're just strong, silent types: "Inside, everything's working all the time with them. What you see isn't what you get."

What you see, according to the Globe:

They are impossibly constructed: 6 feet 5 inches tall, with shoulders that jut out like coat hangers, their limbs wrapped in the long, strong muscles typical of rowers, their heads crowned with identical waves of light brown hair.

A photo accompanying the piece shows the two with California governor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger; all three have equally rippling pecs, sculling forward from their white polo shirts.

What you get, from Cameron:

One of the cool things about amateur athletics is that I think the pursuit is sort of the pursuit of excellence for nothing more than trying to be excellent. At the end of the day, going fast in the water, in its own intrinsic value, doesn't mean much more than the time that you put on the clock. But I think it's the focus and the effort and what you put in to become excellent, and the fact that it is, in some respects, meaningless, that makes it all the more interesting. We're getting a lot out of it, but it's not like an NBA championship, or something like that. We're trying to be good at something for the sake of being good.

Sartre would be proud. Tyler's contribution:

"I think people get caught up in what's the value of rowing — what does it do for you? — and that's just totally missing the larger picture.... The way it shook out, we ended up in the pair. We thought it was a good fit for us... If you miss a practice, you pay. It's a direct correlation. You see it. It's impossible to not be hit over the head with that reality.... Everybody counts on every stroke.

At that last bit, Cameron nodded eloquently. And a stereotype held firm.

(Photo by Reuters)

Apparently, in October 2007, Facebook and Microsoft issued a press release stating Microsoft would “take a $240 million stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation.”... Defendants [Facebook] proffer evidence that subsequent to the press release, in the regular course of its operations, Facebook’s Board of Directors determined a value of the company’s “shares” which was different than the valuation disclosed in the press release.

So while Facebook was happy to sell 1.6 percent of the company to Microsoft for $240 million for a $15 billion valuation last fall — and tell the press all about it — remember, that doesn't mean the company is actually worth $15 billion. In fact, a Silicon Alley Insider commenter reports: "Try $2 billion to $3 billion. An owner is out trying to peddle common stock to VC's right now. The price is under $4 billion for sure."(Photo by AP/Ruttle)

Since the Facebook-ConnectU settlement was likely part-cash, part-stock, one possibility is that the ConnectU founders feel misled by the value of the equity portion of the settlement and believe that fraudulent representations about its value were made to them.

Could be. Or it could be that the Winklevoss' and Narendra don't have much going and need more than they originally agreed to. ConnectU has about 2,000 users and the founders' last law firm, Quinn Emanuel, recently filed a lien against Connect for any bounty turned up in court going forward. (Photo by AP/Krupa)

We don't have inside information, but simple logic tells us the cleanest way to handle this is an acquisition. Buying ConnectU gives its founders a payoff, which they greatly desire, for an otherwise worthless company. For Facebook, buying ConnectU makes the issue of who owns its code moot. While Facebook's executives have been urging Zuckerberg to end the lawsuit for a while, new Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has to have weighed in favoring a settlement. At Google in 2004, Sandberg watched as the company handed over 2.7 million shares to settle claims that Google had infringed on Yahoo's patents. It's a history lesson that makes us wonder: After Zuckerberg rebuffed its $1 billion offer, why didn't Yahoo buy ConnectU?

After the Winklevosses brought charges against Zuckerberg for violating college rules, he responded in a letter:

Frankly, I'm kind of appalled that they're threatening me after the work I've done for them free of charge, but after dealing with a bunch of other groups with deep pockets and good legal connections including companies like Microsoft, I can't say I'm surprised. I try to shrug it off as a minor annoyance that whenever I do something successful, every capitalist out there wants a piece of the action.

This bug is one of the most elementary security bugs that can exist in a PHP website. It's a clear sign of a shoddy, amateurish effort; my coworker Dave Fayram, a web engineering expert, describes it as "shameful".

I mean, seriously. The whole picture is framed to make Winklevoss's shadowy loins — the same loins he claims birthed the very notion of a college social network — the focus of the image, from the composition to the fisheye lens. It's directly in the center — the same exact spot Tyler claims ConnectU deserves in the pantheon of social networks! I'm sure there's some wacko professor at Berkeley who will incorporate this picture into the curriculum and hold a joint symposium with her Gender Studies class and some Haas MBA students. As for me, all I can think is, "Yeah, I'd friend that."

(Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

You're 25. However smart and entrepreneurial (and smolderingly hot) you are, identical suits make you look like your mom picked out your outfits for this year's Easter parade. And that's a buzzkill for any girl who doesn't write twincest fanfic on LiveJournal. Don't give those girls hope for an endless round of "Twinklevoss" narratives. By all means, make the most of the fact that you both look like a dry John F. Kennedy Jr. and let that be your fashion guide. Wear Izod and Polo and other preppy clothing lll you like. But please make sure you never go out in public wearing the same suit again. (Photo by AP/Charles Krupa)

The Winklevosses' lawyer says that the brothers have no plans right now to seek a shutdown of Facebook, but it is a remedy they might seek at trial. He also dismisses Facebook's countersuit against ConnectU as a "nuisance" suit. (Of course, the Facebook users spammed by ConnectU might have different views on what constitutes a nuisance.) He adds that "there are no active settlement talks."

• A brief history of Facebook's legal woes
• Tyler Winklevoss rows against the Facebook tide
• Facebook's wannabe founders
• Facebook's lawsuit that won't go away

Earlier this week, CNBC asked me to come on the air to discuss Facebook's legal woes. I've spent days immersed in legal filings, and the clip, above, just scratches the surface of what I've learned. Next week comes a critical moment for Facebook, the red-hot social network that has captured Silicon Valley's imagination, and its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. After the jump, I explain why Zuckerberg will face a moment of reckoning next Wednesday, July 25, and detail a timeline of Facebook's legal battles.

In November 2003, as a student at Harvard University, Zuckerberg fell in with three classmates who were working on a new idea: ConnectU, a set of interlinked social networks for people at a single college. Zuckerberg did some work for them, but then launched his own website — what's now known as Facebook. The result: A lawsuit that just won't end. Next Wednesday, in a Boston courtroom, Zuckerberg's lawyers have their best shot at making it go away for good, at a hearing on a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Legal experts say that Zuckerberg's best shot is to get the suit dismissed on a technicality, by making a claim that the statute of limitations ran out on his opponents' charges on February 4, 2007, three years after Zuckerberg first launched Facebook.

That's a tough one, but more likely than the alternative, which is getting it dismissed on the substance of the case. One lawyer described ConnectU's charges as "squishy," which sounds bad — but in a hearing on a motion to dismiss, squishy is actually a good thing. If there's any doubt on whether a claim is valid, in such a hearing, the judge's inclination will be to let it go forward to trial. And a trial, with all its uncertainty, is the last thing Zuckerberg needs, with his stated plans to keep Facebook independent and apparent goal to pursue an IPO.

It all comes down to timing, then. With that, here's how Zuckerberg got into this legal spot. Anything missing? Let me know in the comments, and I'll update it.

December 2002: Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra conceive of a college social network and hire Sanjay Mavinkurve to work on what later becomes ConnectU

May 2003: Mavinkurve graduates from Harvard, with the site still unfinished; Victor Gao, another Harvard student, later picks up work on the site

November 2003: After Gao leaves the project, ConnectU's founders hire Mark Zuckerberg to work on Harvard Connection, a website that later became ConnectU

January 11, 2004: While still promising to finish Harvard Connection, Zuckerberg registers the domain for thefacebook.com, a fact that the ConnectU founders allege that didn't disclose in a meeting three days later

February 4, 2004: Zuckerberg launches thefacebook.com

April 2004: Facebook expands to other colleges

April 13, 2004: Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskowitz, and Eduardo Saverin form Thefacebook.com LLC, a partnership (despite this, Saverin is not credited today as a founder by the company)

Spring 2004: ConnectU hires a Web-development firm, iMarc

May 2004: Cameron Winklevoss allegedly emails his father detailing a plan to steal email addresses from Facebook's website

May 2004: Having appealed to Harvard administrators, without success, to rule that Zuckerberg violated the school's honor code, ConnectU's founders appeal to Harvard president Larry Summers, who also rebuffs them

May 21, 2004: ConnectU launches its first website, Harvard Connection

June 11, 2004: ConnectU's founders allegedly ask iMarc to write a script that automatically logs into the Facebook website and harvests users' email addresses; iMarc refuses

July 22, 2004: ConnectU's founders allegedly send thousands of emails to Facebook users inviting them to join ConnectU

September 2, 2004: ConnectU files a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and other Facebook founders

February 2005: Facebook blocks ConnectU's alleged continued attempts to harvest emails from its website

May 26, 2005: Accel Partners invests $13 million in Facebook

August 23, 2005: Facebook, at bad-boy entrepreneur Sean Parker's instigation, buys the facebook.com domain name for $200,000

October 14, 2005: Facebook's founders file a motion to dismiss ConnectU's lawsuit

September 11, 2006: Facebook allows any user with an email address to join the site, and its user base begins to grow explosively

March 9, 2007: Facebook files a countersuit against ConnectU, charging it, among other things, with violating antispam laws

March 28, 2007: A court dismisses ConnectU's original lawsuit, without prejudice, allowing ConnectU to immediately file a new lawsuit against Facebook's founders as well as the company itself

June 23, 2007: Court grants a hearing on a motion to dismiss ConnectU's lawsuit against Facebook, scheduled for July 25

Where he goes too far is whe he tries to pretend that he, twin brother Cameron, and partner Divya Narendra — Facebook-founder wannabes, all three — are just trying to right a wrong, not trying to win a big legal settlement:

We've been pursuing this since Facebook had 200 users. We are fully prepared to go all the way.