[tomtom]

Nope

[tomtom]

The stock buy back program (incidentally - the largest ever) does in some way reward investors.
Thanks for comments.

[RASTERMAN]

I don't know if you remember AirWarrior... It was the first non-military/non-commercial flight simulator that I had experienced and for it's time it was quite impressive.
AirWarrior was a service provided by Kesmai via the GEnie network in the days of 300-1200 baud modems. What drew me to AW was that it was multi-user. Six(?) of us could all be "manning" various positions within a B52 (or fly individually a selection of other craft such as a P51) and conduct various missions. Wasted too many hours there!
Anyway, I can't be sure without some digging around, but I believe Kesmai/GEnie/AW came out well before MS Flight Simulator as we know it today. I have to admit that MS FS did have a much more realistic look and feel (even if it lacked multi-user play), so they definitely get some credit there.
Cheers!
---RASTER
P.S.
After a small amount of research, I do see that FS came out before AW. MS of course did not develop it from scratch, but originally licensed it from subLOGIC. Here's an excerpt from wikipedia;
[Bruce Artwick incorporated a company called subLOGIC Corporation in 1977 and began selling flight simulators for 8080 computers such as the Altair 8800 and IMSAI 8080. In 1979 subLOGIC released FS1 Flight Simulator for the Apple II. In 1980 subLOGIC released a version for the Tandy TRS-80, and in 1982 they licensed an IBM PC version with CGA graphics to Microsoft, which was released as Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.00. subLOGIC continued to develop the product for other platforms, and their improved Flight Simulator II was ported to Apple II in 1983, to the Commodore 64 and Atari 800 in 1984, and to the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST in 1986. Meanwhile, Bruce Artwick left subLOGIC to found Bruce Artwick Organisation to work on subsequent Microsoft releases, beginning with Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0 in 1988.]
History of MS FS
History of AW
It seems that Apple had FS before MS did. How very surprising! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[jmincey]

One thing lost in Ballmer's ridiculous and embarrassing statement about Microsoft's being the only "multi-core" technology company is that what he says is patently false. Another example of such a company is 3M Corporation. This link alone illustrates all the different areas in which 3M does business. And IBM is most certainly a multi-core company as well. Xerox and Texas Instruments are other examples.
I even consider Sun Microsystems to be a multi-core technology company, for the semiconductor and microprocessor business is substantially different from the OS/systems software business. Their markets and economic conditions are dramatically different.
For a company to be involved in multiple core businesses is not new or novel and, indeed, all the foregoing companies are more multi-core than Microsoft could dream of being anyway.
Getting back to Ballmer and his new term, multi-core, this is just an example of a guy who has been given a new toy and who naturally wants to play with it. It's truly pathetic, and I can't imagine what it must be like to work under this unimaginative hack.

[jmincey]

Here's another "multi-core" technology company, none other than Hewlett-Packard. It develops multiple operating systems, computers for all classes of service, printers, and it provides IT services as well.
Apple itself could be considered multi-core, for it develops operating systems on the one hand while manufacturing computers on the other -- and then maintains an online remote storage and e-mail service as well. Apple also develops a relational database manager as well as software for the vertical markets of video, graphics, and music.
Then there is this other Apple business called online music service.

[tomtom]

Perhaps even Ballmer now aspires to be a multi-core Apple.

[jmincey]

Ha -- I must confess I was unaware of the obvious pun when I spoke of that.

[SeaFox]

Quote:

---

All this makes Ballmer nothing more than a chearleader, a game show host, a marketing shill. And I'm beginning to think he honestly thinks he and Microsoft are "innovating" merely on account of seeing what is directly in front of them.

---

Remember that Ballmer was in the marketting arm of Microsoft before becoming the Big Kahuna. A marketing shill is precisely what he is supposed to be, and he's sold himself as being The Man to Run MS despite his actual abilities.
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[jmincey]

While none of us can have expertise in all areas of corporate management and governance, I should think Ballmer would have enough on the ball to recognize that the role of CEO is materially different from that of marketing VP. But it seems the die is cast and that Ballmer won't or can't adapt to the requirements of a CEO.
And did I really spell cheerleader as "chearleader" in my earlier post? It's a pity this forum doesn't include a spell checker for typos.

[SeaFox]

Quote:

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If Microsoft wanted to do something innovative for their stockholders they'd take that enormous cash hoard pay a dividend to said stockholders and stop wasting money on losers like Xbox and Zune.

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If they pay that money to their stockholders like they should have long ago, they wouldn't have it to hold over all their aspiring competitors' heads.

[SeaFox]

Quote:

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And did I really spell cheerleader as "chearleader" in my earlier post? It's a pity this forum doesn't include a spell checker for typos.

---

Tsk, tsk. You're supposed to use OSX's built in spellchecker instead.
I just thought that was a cute answer. It was the one I used to get from Apple's .Mac support when I complained about webmail not having a spellchecker. The obvious probelm being that if I was using webmail, it would be becuase I wasn't using my own computer at the time. And given that 19 out of 20 of the world's PC's are, well PC's. The likelyhood that I would be using a public terminal that happened to also be a Macintosh running OSX was NIL.

[Deejemon]

Quote:

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"We will never [again] have a five-year gap between the releases of major products,"

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Apparently they haven't learned their lesson about pre-announcing things. This practically guarantees that a significant product will face set-backs and problems and will indeed blow out the release date.
Murphy's is a law for a reason.