__/ [ Rex Ballard ] on Thursday 26 April 2007 22:18 \__
> All you gotta do is "find the queen".
>
> Those who know the game know how much if it is slight of hand, making
> it nearly impossible to pick correctly, often because the real card
> was palmed and will only show up when the wrong card (all 3) has been
> chosen.
>
> Microsoft reported Record profits, a 32% increase in revenue, and a
> Earnings per share grew 72%.
>
> Pretty impressive - except:
>
> These results reflect $1.67 billion of revenue and operating income,
> $1.14 billion of net income and $0.12 of diluted earnings per share
> that
> were previously deferred primarily related to the technology guarantee
> programs for Windows Vista(TM) and the 2007 Microsoft(R) Office
> release.
>
> Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat. Remember all of
> those "Vista ready" machines that were sold last year, and the support
> contracts? Appearantly Microsoft decided to call some portion of
> those XP sales a "Technology Guarantee" - so they could report it as
> Vista revenue.
Good catch, Rex. There are many funny things about these figures and the more
I explore, the more I find out about them. XBox, by the way, is still losing
a lot of money. In the past quarter it lost over $0.3 billion. That's on top
of expenses like the Novell deal, which cost an equal amount of money. It
was intended to fight the 'Linux threat'.
Microsoft has lost over half of its cash reserves in just 2 years. Don't
believe me? Go to the Seattle Pi...
,----[ Quote ]
| But Microsoft has taken a series of steps to reduce its cash
| balance. Specifically, by Microsoft's count, the company has
| paid out nearly $100 billion through dividends and repurchasing
| its own stock in the past five years.
`----
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/309852_software02.html
Speaking of your subject line:
Microsoft playing three card monte with XML conversion
,----[ Quote ]
| Gary Edwards of the Open Document Foundation, a leading member
| of its technical committee, says Microsoft is playing proprietary
| games aimed at controlling XML file formats and preventing the
| Open Document Format from gaining a foothold.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=959
--
~~ With kind regards
Roy S. Schestowitz | Useless fact: 85% of plant life in in the oceans
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