>>>Buggy whips always come in handy - if only to seek redress from scoundrels ! <s>
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>LOL
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>FWIW, I don't think Hank is looking for a new Fox. He (along with others) identified a series of bullets that he valued and that happened to be implicit in Fox. Had MS offered those bullets on any of their development pathways, I have absolutely no doubt that HF would have remained a MS stalwart along with many others who are accused of "dithering". ;-)



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>FWIW, MS has been one of history's most successful companies, but it is not infallible. Look at the mobile debacle- IMHO shareholders should have flayed a generation of MS executives for ceding the desktop of the future to an upstart with absolutely no UI heritage. Instead there seems to be widespread acceptance of the MS kool-aid from shareholders and loyalists. That's a comfortable strategy when MS rules the roost but MS is a midget in the future mobile arena and almost certainly will display Machiavellian tendencies when the crunch comes... favoring Nokia over earlier WP7 handset makers is only the start.

Yeah, but sometimes that Machiavelli stuff works <g> I think any big corporation gets bloated and internal office politics and competing fiefdoms lead to blindspots and dead ends. ( frankly I'm surprised any of them ever make any money ) MS certainly took a long time "get" the internet and they seem to be going through the same thing with mobile, but their corporate culture always allows for buying the littler guys who did get it.

I have no personal loyalty to MS or any particular technology niche. But I really do like the idea of any development path where other pioneers get to take the arrows and I can come in later and loot the bodies.