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Comment Metric should be number of tickets, not revenue... (Score 4, Insightful) 364

...a whopping $125.1 million....

With the ever-increasing price of tickets, using revenue as a judge of "record-breaking" is grossly inaccurate, as it erroneously compares unequal ticket prices and ignores the effect of inflation over the years.

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It would be more accurate (though still not completely accurate) to use the number of tickets sold as the basis for judging whether all-time records have been broken.

Comment Software can be remarkably discriminatory.... (Score 1) 814

... even more so than some of the egregiously bigoted comments I've been reading on this thread.

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A few years ago I was looking for genealogy software. One of my requirements was the need to handle a F-F marriage with kids in the family. Fortunately, The Master Genealogist was up to the task. Amazingly, there were few choices that met an important requirement that I had.

Comment XP's retirement won't shake PC slump (Score 2) 438

Windows XP's looming retirement won't shake PC business out of sales funk

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The looming retirement of Windows XP won't stem the dramatic drop in PC sales this year, but it may help bolster Microsoft's revenue, analysts said today. Although experts expect some business laggards to buy new hardware as they try to replace the 12-year-old XP before it's retired in April 2014, the quantities won't be enough to move the PC shipment needle to the positive side of the meter. "Replacements for Windows XP won't be enough to offset the declines on the consumer side," said David Daoud, an analyst with IDC.

Comment Mostly off Windows... (Score 1) 1215

I have gone from 8 computers running Windows back in the Windows 2000 days, to two computers running Windows and four computers running FreeBSD and two computer running OpenBSD. The Windows computers are all notebook clients, while the BSD boxes are the servers. I've stayed with Windows for clients because I have not seen any real desktop alternative available. Ubuntu was a fore-runner, but that distribution has since gone bad. I am using BSD's for the servers because, well, they just work.

Comment Re:Sell the only post-pc success story MS has? (Score 3, Informative) 400

Except that the Xbox div loses tons of money.

It always amazes me how many people actually think that the Xbox is a highly profitable endeavor for Microsoft. While it has turned profitable recently, the Entertainment & Devices Division (where XBox is accounted for) is only mildly profitable. Nowhere near the profit rate of Microsoft's enterprise and desktop cash-cows. It is a stretch to call the Xbox a fiscal "success", at best one could now say it is not "money-losing". It is highly unlikely that Microsoft could expand the revenues and margins of EDD into a company-sustaining business.

Comment Re:Yes they can (Score 1) 497

Enterprise computing is very profitable for Microsoft, not so much their gaming division.

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That said...

Microsoft has everything to worry about,.

Unless and until Mr. Ballmer is removed from CEO, Microsoft will never know how to compete in a profitable manner without having the benefit of a dominant, monopolistic marketshare to leverage.

Comment Re:Who cares? (Score 1, Insightful) 277

Yeah, maybe it's time to shut Apple down and give the money back to the shareholders. [with pointer to sarcasm reference]

You misunderstood what I said. When a company is at its peak, most think it will continue to perform at the same level. In Apple's case, that means very significant growth per year, a growth rate that is very unlikely for Apple to maintain. Apple's "market-changing" products seem to be fewer and farther in-between of late.

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In May 2003, Apple's stock was around 8, it recently peaked at nearly 100 times that price.

Do you really think that Apple's stock price will increase another 100-fold over the next ten years? Do you really think that Apple can maintain the same growth rate over the next ten years?

Hence my comment that Apple's best days are behind it.

Comment Re:Who cares? (Score 0, Troll) 277

Apple used to be a lot more reticent regarding future products. The fact that Mr. Cook is talking/hinting about future products is confirmation that Apple knows its best days are behind it. Mr. Cook is trying, unsuccessfully it appears, to regenerate the buzz around Apple.

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