----- Original Message ----- From: <alex@yuriev.com> To: "Bradley Dunn" <bradley@dunn.org> Cc: "Scott Francis" <darkuncle@darkuncle.net>; <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Friday, July 12, 2002 10:58 AM Subject: Re: Buffett bailout of WorldCom raises questions of influence
Anyone making this statement would do well to realize that the loss that MSFT experienced in cable is equivalent to that person spending a $10 for lunch. While it could be an enormous expense for a bum on a street, it does not mean anything for someone who makes $100k per year after taxes.
My copy of Microsoft's Q1FY2002 earnings statement has an after-tax writeoff of $1.24 billion for investment losses, largely in cable, which reduced earnings per share from 43 cents to 23 cents. Expensive lunch indeed. But what's a few orders of magnitude on NANOG? The monetary loss wasn't the point anyway. The point was Microsoft's track record when venturing outside its core business is mixed at best. (The jury's still out on the Xbox.) Bradley