a hypothetical company that makes >1billion profit in a year is not "sustaining".
As I mentioned, those profit levels are new to EDD. The Xbox had been a loss-leader for Microsoft, only recently becoming profitable.
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.
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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.
Wikipedia entry on sports:
If you are trying to justify your assertion by quoting Wikipedia entries, you've lost the debate before you even started.
All sports are a game no matter how you try and word it.
But all games are not a sport, no matter how you try to justify it.
What most of us wanted back was the Start menu, not just the Start button. Microsoft still doesn't get it:
Yup. We also want to know that Microsoft won't continue to act stupidly and once again remove the Start Menu in the future.
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.
... The suite was released as an alpha version, which means that not everything works yet....
It it is not working yet, it has not been built.
...Mr. McAfee provided some extraordinarily entertaining and frank answers...
Entertaining? Yes, in a watching a train wreck type of manner.
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Frank? Unknown. It is difficult to ascertain the truthiness of his answers.
But my original question still stands, why is everyone wasting so much time on this person?
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On the other hand, it would be really nice if the Firefox developers fixed their proxy issues, and fixed the javascript engine choking on sites.
The problem with the testerone-induced rapid development cycle is that it apparently leads to a lot of bravado (we're better than Chrome") and little ongoing maintenance of browsing issues.
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?