“We live in extraordinary economic times here in the U.S. and
this success could ignite a whole new cycle of economic prosperity.
We must first, however, take a hard look at what is occurring at
Microsoft.”
“Microsoft is a great company with terrific employees. Sadly,
many of these brilliant people have been blinded by the stock price
and unable to see that Microsoft is also the key architect of the
greatest financial fraud/pyramid scheme this century.”
“It is not uncommon for participants in pyramid schemes to lose
their emotional bearings.”
“The fundamental problem is that Microsoft is incurring massive
losses and only by accounting illusions are they able to show a
profit. Specifically, Microsoft is granting excessive amounts of
stock options that are allowing the company to understate its
costs. You might ask yourself, what would happen to Microsoft’s
stock price if the public suddenly realized that they lost $10
billion in 1999 rather than earning the reported $7.8 billion?”
“Mike Brown was Chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange at the
same time he was CFO of Microsoft. I certainly don’t recall reading
that in the articles. Given that Microsoft was one of the largest
companies on the exchange with significant trading volume, is this
not a dramatic example of a clear conflict of interest for a Chief
Financial Officer of a publicly traded company.”
“Mr. Brown is the one who hired his former boss from Deloitte
and Touche as internal auditor. When this respected former partner
of Deloitte told Mike that what they were doing was illegal and
constituted securities fraud he was given the option to resign or
be fired, according to an ABC News Story. He later was awarded $4
million under the Federal Whistleblowers Act.”
—–
“What advice would you offer supporters of Linux? Go
easy on Microsoft’s employees. They have pride too and are very
insulated from what is occurring. Regarding a product strategy, why
not focus on providing what Windows has never done well, for
example file compression, backups and directory management. Rather
than use software testers, try teachers and nurses and focus on the
front-end. The big lesson regarding Unix was that too little
attention was paid to the front-end. Most users are overwhelmed
with managing information and want simplified direct access to the
Internet, a few basic applications and a way to store things.”