Much more than $0.20. And the transition to get to a system to grow the amount of food we do without antibiotics would require a long and very costly transition.

It is a bit more complex than having a scrape and then you die, but how things are now it is virtually impossible to die from a scrape now. If you look at Survivor, a few contestants have been taken off the show due to infections from broken skin. The probably is fairly low, but the consequences are high (death). It is fear mongering to a degree, but most people do not appreciate how good we have it now. And most cuts and scrapes are treated with antibiotics. You know the polysporin cream and those ointments your parents used on you? Antibiotic creams.

Mod parent up :)

Maybe it is a country thing (I am a Canadian and did my degree here), or a program thing, but my program did not emphasize cost cutting in the slightest. We actually spent most of the time dealing with resolving problems, and other human-like interactions as well as learning enough in a subject so we could actually converse and analyse data with regards to it.

I read a book once about the alphabet. I too have yet to meet someone that speaks English that knew something important that didn't use the pieces found in that book.

I am an MBA and I agree with him comments to a degree. A lot of my classmates did not think. As a graduate myself I question how anyone thinks they can run a company entirely with numbers and figures - it just doesn't work. There is a personal aspect to things since humans are not machines (at least not yet ;). I am of the belief that it is my job to manage people, and by that I mean shield them from the crap above so that they can do their job. Then again I am humble enough to know when I am over my head and ask the people that actually know their shit or have to deal with it on the daily basis. Then again, this could be said for ANY degree or practice. I knew many pharmacists who were huge on always giving a drug to treat when sometimes removing drugs was a better solution. I also know many self proclaimed IT gurus who think they know best but have never actually sat down with an end user to figure out how to enable them to work better.

The question is would it have dropped rapidly had they continued on the same path (e.g. with no active decision to drop Symbian). My gut says yes, since everyone and they dog wanted an iPhone and later a Galaxy. If you look at typical models of what companies consider "cash cows", Symbian phones were that. They were a product at the end of their lifecycle raking in a ton of money. However this always happens at the end of a lifecycle.

You're right! That is why they were so successful with the Kin. No wait... Oh there is the Zune... crap. Surface RT? .... Ah the Xbox! Yes that made it, although the first one was run entirely in the red and cost billions to gain the market share it has. So yes, they do have experience in marketing some types of physical products, but the integrated hardware/software ones appear to be not their strong suit. Also note the examples you gave, they were physical products that supported the software they sold. That does make for a large difference.

The picture is worth 1000 words, but make sure you have the right data on the picture. Nokia was making money hand over first, and there is a large dip in 2009, and it was trending down for 2 years beforehand. Know why? Well Apple came out with something called the iphone. Suddenly anything Nokia had paled by comparison. The point is that Nokia was dying before Elop came to power. I've read the public board minutes when they were busy picking a new CEO, they knew they were in trouble. They picked Elop since he had a history of turning companies around (you can argue through questionable means), and he was a software guy - and Nokia until then was a hardware company that didn't get software (or at least that is how the board saw it). Turning Nokia around, or any large company, is not easy. It does take time. The sales and money Nokia had were from their legacy products, where Nokia was the market leader. That legacy has become less important over time as the smartphone market has matured. Could Nokia have made their own way with MeeGo? Maybe. I would present Blackberry and WebOS as evidence that the market would have not supported this system. Could Nokia have gone with android? Yes - but there is no way they could have maintained the fat margins they had with their dumbphones with all the competition. That would have driven sales up and operating revenues down (same situation as presented). And even going android was no guarantee, little HTC has been nearly destroyed in its battle.

You obviously don't know what an MBA teaches. Microsoft is trying to become a physical product company (along with services), so Alan Mulally is a very good choice. You don't need to know how to make something to manage the people that actually make it. You cannot be too arrogant and not listen to them, but if tempered it can work out better. If /. is correct, M$ needs a major change in leadership in order to become successful again.

He considered android and chose not to use it, there is a difference. You could say it may have worked out well for Nokia had they picked android. Then again look at who tried Android: Dell, HTC, Samsung, LG, Motorola, Lenovo, etc. The only one that can safely say they did well with the android platform is Samsung. That is one winner and most of the other companies were destroyed in the process. The android market was a knife fight, it is not insane to decide not to participate in it.

Nokia was tanking long before Elop, it just became much more visible during his reign. And look at what he actually accomplished. Pre-Elop Nokia had ALL divisions losing money. He has now left, and the mapping division is in the black. Their network infrastructure is in the black. Nokia could not make a good run with the phone and device portion, which he was able to sell, giving Nokia enough cash to pay off many restructuring debts. That is actually not a bad record.

Actually it won't come from customers either. This is why companies have insurance for such things.

Bell already serves you ads when you use their DNS server. For websites that don't exist their DNS redirects you to advertise sponsored pages/searches provided by Bell. Rogers does the same.

Dealerships are "arms-length" from the car maker (in theory). This prevents them from price fixing and encourages competition (in theory). Tesla wants to run these themselves rather than put a 3rd party in the middle. I've been to a Tesla store and it was amazing, stupid protectionist laws.