MVP?

[Brian Kvalheim - [MSFT MVP]]

Hi Steve Easton ([email protected]),
in the newsgroups
you posted:

|| I know book value and share prices are two different things. That's
|| why I said retained earnings are a "part of" what determines book
|| value.
||
|| That said, there is *no* IRS ruling that mandates that a publicly
|| traded company is forced to pay dividends to common stock holders.
|| It is a decision of the board of directors. The board can be forced
|| however by the common stock holders *if* the common stock holders
|| can accumulate enough "share" votes to represent a majority of the
|| outstanding shares. e.g. 51%
||
|| A company is however "required" to pay taxes on retained earnings.
||
|| Also, as a broker, it was my responsibility to understand the tax
|| implications of any "pending" or "requested" transaction and explain
|| such to my clients.
||
|| But to get back to my original point, paying dividends is not always
|| in the best interest of the share holders.
||
|| Example right out of the "Book"
|| You own 1000 shares of XYX which trades at $10 per share. CMV $10,000
|| XYX decides to declare and pay a one time $5 dividend.
|| On the X date ( the day the dividend is paid ) you now own 1000
|| shares of XYZ trading at $5 per share and you have a "taxable
|| income" cash gain in your account of $5000.
||
|| Share prices are always adjusted downward by the exchanges in the
|| exact amount of the dividend before they start trading on the X
|| date. As are any Put or Call options that trade with the shares.
||
|| My final point is, lamenting the fact that MSFT doesn't ( or hasn't
|| in the past ) pay dividends is pointless as there's really no gain
|| for the share holders to receive a dividend.
||
|| If you want dividends, buy Utilities or Preferreds.
|| ( but in the face of rising interest rates I wouldn't own them
|| either )

Some people are just not meant to understand

--
Brian Kvalheim
Microsoft Publisher MVP
http://www.publishermvps.com
~pay it forward~

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and
confers no rights.

 

[Ed Bennett]

A small child turns to Ed, and exclaims: "Look! Look! A post from

Your comments prove you miss the point of half of what I said.

And your comment proves that you have no interest in me understanding what
you are going on about.
Although I am pretty sure I already do:
You are annoyed that Microsoft say that Publisher can do web pages when it
can't do the ones that you want it to do.

And M$
is a fitting way to refer to an incedibly greedy company.

So Microsoft are a greedy company? There are two ways I can look at that
comment:
a) Microsoft, like any large corporation, have to make a lot of money to
cover all their costs, and make money for all their shareholders and
directors.
or b) Microsoft facilitated the driving down of computer costs from many
thousands of dollars to their current price of sub-$1000 dollars. They
charge far less for their products than many competitors do.

Did I dream
it, or did M$ admit anticompetitive practices in the settlement of
multiple court actions against it? Cite?

M$ sure bought you cheap.

Microsoft didn't "buy" me at all, thank you very much. I do what I do in
the newsgroups because I enjoy helping others, and I accept the MVP award
because I love to get recognised for doing what I enjoy. That's why people
play sports competitively, isn't it? So they can get recognition for doing
what they enjoy? Well I am into the sport of helping others.

BTW,
metaphor is a perfectly acceptable term in the context I used it.

And a hammer is a perfectly acceptable tool for driving in a screw.

 

[Ed Bennett]

A small child turns to Ed, and exclaims: "Look! Look! A post from

It is axiomatic that you never come out ahead dealing with bankers...

And it is interesting to see that you almost always speak in broad
generalisations.
I deal with a banker almost every day of my life, and I normally come out
pretty well from it.

 

[Ed Bennett]

A small child turns to Ed, and exclaims: "Look! Look! A post from

In most jurisdictions, you would be wrong about that. There is a duty
to disclose known material defects, like a rat infestation.

Like I said, "Maybe I'm exaggerating the potential problem with the house a
little".
But if there are problems with the house that the agent can get away with
not disclosing, they will.

Likewise,
M$ has an ethical and legal duty to not misrepresnt its software.

I don't have a boxed copy of Publisher 2003, so I can't tell what the exact
phrase you have gripes with is.
If you want to scan it in and email it to me so I can see, then I will
discuss this further.
But my gut feeling is that Microsoft have not said anything that
misrepresents the abilities of the software.
I could sell a hard block of wood as a tool to drive in nails, and I could
say that it did that on the box, and I firmly believe that I would not be
required to put on the box that it would not drive nails into metal, or that
it did not drive nails as well as a hammer.

The
courts refer to innocent advertising hype as "fluff", but if you read
a Publisher 2002 retail package, any reasonable individual would
conclude it was just peachy for websites

I do have a Publisher 2002 Deluxe box...
The things that the box I have plays up are the ability to convert a print
publication to a website, and the ability to use the web site wizard to
create a website.

(of course MVPs do not fall
in the catagory of reasonable individual in thsi case).

So you are now telling me that I am not a reasonable individual?

I don't mind spending money to move to a better program.

And presumably you don't mind spending ten or more times as much time and
effort arguing your "case" with a load of people who have completely the
opposite opinion.
I don't mind you doing that. It's your time, you do what you want with it.

What I am
pissed about is that it is very difficult to make the transistion,

Lots of other transitions are difficult. Sometimes between applications of
the same non-Microsoft manufacturer. I wouldn't blame Microsoft for a
problem that isn't local to only them.

and
now it is not even possible for all practical purposes to even move to
Publisher 2003 (due to the bloated code problem for any site of more
than a very few pages).

I have little experience in moving from Publisher to FrontPage, so I'm not
going to argue this corner at the moment.

I am sorry if the MVPs in here do not understand why this would piss a
person off.

I understand that it could piss a person off that they can't move from one
app to another like this.
But re-reading my Publisher 2002 Deluxe box I don't see anything said about
being able to move to FrontPage easily.
Of course, that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be possible, but it does mean
that it's not possible at the moment.
Maybe in the future this task will be made easier. Publisher is still a
growing app, and there is always room for improvement in any product.

 

[Steve Easton]

The fact remains that M$ stock fell dramatically after the bubble

burst (many other stocks suffered also). It is difficult to argue
that the stockholders are better off without dividends being paid
since many are holding stock that is worth less than they paid for it
to this day.

Intelligent investors don't own MSFT for it's income potential, they own it for it's
growth potential.
Intelligent smart investors were selling into the *Bubble* in the months before 9-11.
Investors who still own it are buying more and averaging down.
And even smarter investors are writing covered calls against the shares they own and are
thereby in effect creating their own dividends.


--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed..................
...............................with a computer

 

[analog]

I give up; you MVPs are so pleased with M$ and your silly titles that
you truly believe M$ can do no wrong. The only problem is that M$ has
found itself in the middle of scores of antitrust lawsuits, and that
did not happen as a result of M$'s generosity (yes, there are scores
of them, you just don't hear about most).

M$ did not pay dividends for many years while it was racking up huge
profits. That is fine if there is some justification for accumulating
billions of dollars in retained earnings. But the stockholders get
screwed in this scenario because the tax on excess retained earnings
is punitive. Stated otherwise, the tax law discourages accumulating
excess retained earnings. I don't make this shit up; it is just the
way it works.

You MVPs know everything; the rest of us grow old waiting on hold for
outsourced technical support.

 

[Don Schmidt]

You need a much needed lesson in basic investing.

I would classify company stocks into three groups, "growth", "return" and a
"bit of both". A company can reinvest the profits back into the company
(i.e., Microsoft) thus making the company worth more resulting in the value
of the stock to go up. A company can reinvest some of the profits back into
the company increasing the value of the company at a lesser rate and
distribute part of the dividends but the stock doesn't increase in value at
the rate of the first example. And then there is the company that
distributes all of the profits and soon files bankruptcy.

Microsoft stock, which anyone can purchase is what made Bill Gates rich, not
his salary.

If you dislike Microsoft so much, you might consider, Unix, Mac, Sun, Atari,
Commodore, Palm Pilot.
Ooppsss! I said Unix! That's from Ma Bell and everyone hates Ma Bell except
us retired telephone employees.<G>

 

[analog]

No real disagreement. But it is one thing to reinvest in the company,
and quite another to sit on billions and billions in tha bank.

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 13:59:43 -0700, "Don Schmidt" <Retired

 

[Don Schmidt]

I don't agree that Microsoft has "billions and billions" in the bank. I
strongly suspect Microsoft has piles and piles of stock certificates and
they are in billions and billions of stock holders' safety deposit boxes.

I suspect you are early in the learning curve of the task you've undertaken.
Frustration has set in and, in the vernacular of the uncouth, you are
pissed. Well, most everyone in this and all other news groups can say,
"Been there, done that." (being "p")

Publisher may be the Model T of web site creating tools and you want a
Lamborghini. Once you chug around the block in your "T", know what the five
pedals do, then take on the Lamborghini but be forewarned the "L" is going
to be more spendy than the "T". You may want to inquire on the cost of a
professional site designer. And after it's up and running, you can do the
maintenance.

 

[analog]

I don't agree that Microsoft has "billions and billions" in the bank. I
strongly suspect Microsoft has piles and piles of stock certificates and
they are in billions and billions of stock holders' safety deposit boxes.

*In July of 2003, M$ had a 49 billion dollar cash reserve. I do not
know what it is at this time, but it is huge. Facts is facts. You
might want to check your facts before making foolish statements.

I suspect you are early in the learning curve of the task you've undertaken.
Frustration has set in and, in the vernacular of the uncouth, you are
pissed. Well, most everyone in this and all other news groups can say,
"Been there, done that." (being "p")

*Wrong. I have used Publisher for five (5) years to put up a
commercial website. I actually like it, but am concerned about being
soon stuck in an orphaned application (Publisher 2000). Unless M$
gets busy and fixes the problems in Publisher 2003, it cannot be used
for relatively large websites. The frustration is that Publisher 2003
is a disaster for a large website, and that is is not easy to move
into FrontPage because of the weird html Publisher generates (even
Publisher 2000 has nested tables and other odball code).

Publisher may be the Model T of web site creating tools and you want a
Lamborghini. Once you chug around the block in your "T", know what the five
pedals do, then take on the Lamborghini but be forewarned the "L" is going
to be more spendy than the "T". You may want to inquire on the cost of a
professional site designer. And after it's up and running, you can do the
maintenance.

*Wrong. I do not want an "L". You have no understanding of the
issues here at all.

 

[Steve Easton]

So, what is wrong with nested tables??

And why can't publisher be used for large web sites.??
--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed..................
...............................with a computer

 

[Cheryl Wise]

Guess you rover looked As the code generated by FrontPage 98 or 2000 then.
Both of which are very heavy on rested tables. That was the nature of the
web in the late 90s.

Times and web standards have changed since then. The newer tools have
moved with them.

 

[Cheryl Wise]

As you might can tell I got my Tablet PC back from Acer yesterday. Got out
of the habit of proofreading twice while it was in the shop. Should have
read:

Guess you never looked at the code generated by FrontPage 98 or 2000 then.
Both of which are very heavy on nested tables.

 

[analog]

I have no idea what is wrong with nested tables, but that is what is
often blamed for difficulty in getting Publisher websites moved into
another program. All I know is that my experience with attemping to
move my Publisher 2000 website into FrontPage 2002 was a mess.
Further, even with the code generation patch, the new .htm files were
huge(r).

Publisher 2000 CAN be used for fairly large sites, especially if you
use the trick of breaking the site down into a series of publisher
files. However, Publisher 2002 generates incredibly huge bloated
..html, and even the patch created to address that problem only
remedies it partially. I have not used Publisher 2003, but David's
published information suggests it has the same tendency.

Syd