Bob J wrote:

>The other day on the way home from work I listened to an NPR feature
>on Microsoft's impending $3 stock dividend; one of the comments I
>heard was the push internally for Microsoft to diversify itself from
>the mainline revenue source of Windows, but that even if they did
>start selling massive amounts of xbox games and advertising on their
>new search engine, for example, that it wouldn't amount to a fraction
>of their revenue coming from Windows licensing.  Even after the stock
>dividend they will have something like fifteen BILLION in cash and
>feasibly they could operate for years with absolutely no revenue with
>that kind of cash position.  I doubt very seriously that they will be
>going away.
>  
>
Yep, software comes and software goes, but monopolies live forever.  ;-)

They'll just morph into whatever their shareholders want and they have 
enough vision and expertise to execute on... just like everyone else. 

Having a big pile of money to work with is certainly helpful but they 
don't have any monopoly on ideas, at least.

>The really cool desktop OS right now IMO is OS X, but I'd bet the farm
>that many of the features that Apple built into OS X will be mimicked
>in Longhorn.  History tends to repeat itself.
>

Had to share this one... Apple Macintosh ad, circa 1984.

http://toastdesign.com/apple1984ad/p10.html

Seemed appropriate to the conversation - Yes, that kid on the left is 
Bill Gates, touting the greatness of Macintosh.

He was right of course.  (BIG GRIN)

Nate

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