Re:Just another nail in the coffin (Score 1)

Yeah, I noticed that too. They've gone from 7.3 billion in net income in 2001, to 12.5 billion in 2006. At this rate of spiraling downward, their collapse is imminent.

What puzzles me is how people acting out completely uninformed /. fantasies about Microsoft's demise, or the evils of software patents, or whatever, get rated "5, Insightful." Actually, I'm not puzzled at all; this is known as "preaching to the choir."

Incidentally, y'all might want to check out an article by Paul Graham whose premise is that "if you're against software patents, you're against patents in general."

But really, the trouble here is that there's a lot of uninformed bashing going on, by people who are not familiar with either patents or the software industry. Please talk to some lawyers or legal scholars or people who actually deal with large corporate patent portfolios. You will hear different -- not necessarily correct, mind you, but different -- words from the sort of reflexive geek ranting one gets here.