You bring up a great point and one that needs to be taken into account. If you think back a couple of decades, companies that had a whole lot of excess cash lying around, the default action was to start empire-building by acquiring other companies that may or may not be considered within the arena of their core competency. However, Microsoft is actually doing (Cringe as the Troll mods come flying down) something very intelligent. Instead of going out and trying to do everything under the sun, they are beginning to consolidate their operations to do the one thing that they are really good at which is selling lots and lots of products that are mediocre at best. Furthermore, I would not be at all surprised to see that they start to really concentrate on further increasing their market share by differentiating their products, pricing models, and increasing their overall quality.
I must admit that I am very interested to see how the recent stock buyback and now divestiture plans will affect the near-ish future of Microsoft.
I had a boss like your second supervisor and I have to agree that the ability to shield the worker-bees from management's wrath is an awesome feature to have available. Furthermore, this guy that I worked with was absolutely fanatic about using his considerable influence to find us the jobs that we were looking for. Most supervisors find a good employee and do everything that they can to insure that they never leave while the good ones look to find the most beneficial place in the company for their folks.
My question is why we think we need to have humans involved at all? It seems more logical to me to use robotic means to terraform and set up a planet to be created "in Earth's image." By sending people (genetically engieered or otherwise) to Mars, you run any number of real risks that will ultimately subvert the efforts of this program.
If you don't believe me, just look at how much scrutiny the budget for NASA gets scrutinized every time a piece of crap space shuttle blows up. How bad would it suck if you were an individual on Mars with supplies running out and you can't get back because decides that you cost too much to society.
In regards to your statement..
Retard, do you know what bankruptcy means? It means they don't have the money to pay their bills!
That's not really the case. WorldCom does have the money to pay its bills. Unfortunately it also means that they will have to spin off several of their divisions in order to do so. They have tons of money in assets that they can liquidate in order to be solvent again.
Slashdot Mirror
You bring up a great point and one that needs to be taken into account. If you think back a couple of decades, companies that had a whole lot of excess cash lying around, the default action was to start empire-building by acquiring other companies that may or may not be considered within the arena of their core competency. However, Microsoft is actually doing (Cringe as the Troll mods come flying down) something very intelligent. Instead of going out and trying to do everything under the sun, they are beginning to consolidate their operations to do the one thing that they are really good at which is selling lots and lots of products that are mediocre at best. Furthermore, I would not be at all surprised to see that they start to really concentrate on further increasing their market share by differentiating their products, pricing models, and increasing their overall quality.
I must admit that I am very interested to see how the recent stock buyback and now divestiture plans will affect the near-ish future of Microsoft.
I had a boss like your second supervisor and I have to agree that the ability to shield the worker-bees from management's wrath is an awesome feature to have available. Furthermore, this guy that I worked with was absolutely fanatic about using his considerable influence to find us the jobs that we were looking for. Most supervisors find a good employee and do everything that they can to insure that they never leave while the good ones look to find the most beneficial place in the company for their folks.
My question is why we think we need to have humans involved at all? It seems more logical to me to use robotic means to terraform and set up a planet to be created "in Earth's image." By sending people (genetically engieered or otherwise) to Mars, you run any number of real risks that will ultimately subvert the efforts of this program. If you don't believe me, just look at how much scrutiny the budget for NASA gets scrutinized every time a piece of crap space shuttle blows up. How bad would it suck if you were an individual on Mars with supplies running out and you can't get back because decides that you cost too much to society.
In regards to your statement.. Retard, do you know what bankruptcy means? It means they don't have the money to pay their bills! That's not really the case. WorldCom does have the money to pay its bills. Unfortunately it also means that they will have to spin off several of their divisions in order to do so. They have tons of money in assets that they can liquidate in order to be solvent again.