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Microsoft Asks Fed For Bailout
snydeq writes "Microsoft requested on Tuesday some $20 billion in bailout funds from the federal government, claiming that as the company controls an overwhelming share of the OS market, it is too big to fail. Low adoption rates for Vista, the ensuing ad campaign trying to convince people that they really do like Vista, and the increased need for development resources to rush Windows 7 to market to make people forget about Vista have necessitated the bailout, the company said. 'We want to make it absolutely clear that this is not a crisis of mismanagement,' said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a prepared statement. 'This is simply a crisis of dollars — a crisis of not having enough dollars coming our way.'"
Indeed they are, I read about that one too. Ridiculous!! And here is the link for your M$ hating pleasure.
Wait a minute here.... I read this story and I thought, well hey, a company tried to force on everyone a product that wasn't desirable for the consumer, waited a long time to deliver that product, and has a history of making some products that don't do so well, so is in deep trouble financially and might go under. Seemed pretty reasonable to me, isn't that how capitalism is supposed to work? If you don't make products that people want to buy, aren't you supposed to do poorly?
But then I remembered this is an April Fools joke. Since it's not true, and Microsoft is doing just fine, I thought about why it isn't true: either A) Microsoft really is making products that people want or B) Capitalism isn't working here. Regarding A, I suppose MS does make more decent products than bad ones, but I can't help but think of Microsoft as the GM of the auto-world 20 years ago in that they have a much larger market share than the quality of their products warrants (suggesting B). So I wonder when the Toyota of the operating system world is going to come along and eat MS' lunch? It must be nice to be a monopoly.
P.S. Please MS fanboys, try to remember that the troll or flamebait mods are not a substitute for an "I disagree that Vista was a failure" mod.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Haha that's great. My initial reaction was anger, as the whole financial thing has got me all steamed anyway... but then I remembered what company we're talking about here. subtle, but effective. I must admit I was fooled.
I know this is supposed to be a joke, and I'm sick today so maybe my brain isn't working quite right... but something actually seems rather insightful about this suggestion.
Software is something of genuine market value (in any country that has effective copyright laws to create artificial scarcity, at least) that can be reproduced virtually for free. Seems like the perfect thing to get someone out of debt. Invest in it once and then rake in the dough.
Perhaps the US Gov't could arrange licences with certain highly successful software companies to trade *them* (the software companies) treasury bonds in exchange for licences to distribute those highly successful software packages (perhaps only internationally, reserving the domestic market to the private sector). Use the proceeds from that to pay down foreign debt. That still leaves the US Gov't with debt to some major US companies, which is a less than ideal situation, but certainly preferable to debt to foreign states: at least when that debt gets paid off, the money goes to business in the US, and therefrom to the employees of those businesses, and back around into the US economy.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
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I actually thought it was pretty funny when they posted ridiculous, but true, articles. Can't remember what year that was though.
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
No such time as 12 PM (or 12 AM either for that matter). The abbreviations "AM" and "PM" mean "Ante Meridian" (before noon) and "Post Meridian" (after noon) respectively. It can only ever be 12 noon or 12 midnight.
"Traditional my ass. It's just people sore at being tricked trying to impose an arbitrary rule to turn it around on us."
... (Its was never known as "All Fools 12 hours"). Also TV companies especially in the 1960s/1970s often done april fools *day* jokes, which had the jokes running all day. This new idea of all fools 12 hours is a relatively new idea and I agree, it is used as a defence by anyone caught out by an All Fools Day jokes.
I agree entirely. Its why April Fools day was known years ago as "All Fools Day"
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.