Week in review: Bad news market bears

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While many businesspeople are worrying about a possible recession, Microsoft says it sees its part in the economy remaining strong.

Colleen Healy, Microsoft's general manager of investor relations, said that the company booked a greater amount of future revenue than it had expected, taking in about $500 million more than planned in its "unearned revenue" column. Healy said some of the bookings appear to be early indications of demand for its coming server and tools products, including Windows Server 2008.

"From our perspective, we are expecting IT spending to remain stable," said Healy. "Software, in particular, remains healthy, and our ability to capture IT budgets looks good."

Microsoft also said that it has released another updated test version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1. The company said that the new version, dubbed "Windows Vista SP1 RC Refresh 2," has been released to about 15,000 beta testers. The code is not being made available publicly, Microsoft said.

Wireless goes to Washington
A key federal regulator said he's not ready to pursue new rules requiring wireless carriers to open their networks to whatever devices or programs their customers desire. Federal Communications Commission Democrat Michael Copps said he would not "strongly object" to sitting back, for now, and watching how recent "voluntary" promises by wireless carriers pan out.

For instance, ostensibly because of the threat of regulation, Verizon Wireless recently said it would generally start allowing any phone to run on its network, and allow any application to run on those devices, by the end of this year. Other wireless carriers, such as AT&T, have also been playing up their perceived openness as a marketing tactic.

"I hope it is as good as it sounds," Copps told attendees at an event organized by the New America Foundation. "But we have to ask: has the reality shifted quite as much as the rhetoric has shifted?"

Several former FCC chairmen helped launch a national campaign to help educate parents and teachers about the effect of digital media on kids and teens. The campaign, called the Digital Kids Task Force, will develop education programs and technology to help kids learn online, and a research program to study the Web's impact on children.

The task force was unveiled in partnership with former FCC Chairmen Michael Powell, Will Kennard, and Newton Minow.

The group met with Washington, D.C., lawmakers this week to discuss funding for the project. The talks come as the FCC prepares to auction off newly available broadcast airwaves that will allow TV programmers to offer more wireless Web access to the public, including children. Members of the Digital Kids Task Force say that some of that spectrum should be dedicated to educational programming for kids.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to weigh a dispute that could affect how taxes show up on Americans' cell phone bills, dealing a setback to wireless companies. The case at hand, which pitted Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA against state utility regulators, centers on whether states should be allowed to forbid wireless carriers from breaking out various state and local taxes as line-item fees on a customer's bill.

The wireless companies, naturally, maintain they should be able to establish a visible separation between the base prices of their services and the fees required by various regulators. But state utility regulators have countered that the wireless companies are missing the point: the fees and taxes they impose are generally meant to fall on the wireless carriers themselves, not on consumers.

Also of note
A cyberattack has caused a power blackout in multiple cities outside the United States, the CIA has warned...In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates is calling on companies to think more broadly about how their products can benefit society...A 23-year-old Afghani journalism student is facing a death sentence in his home country for distributing articles allegedly critical of Islam that he had printed from a Web site.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Apocalypse Microsoft - Slow Meltdown to Total Irrelevancy

Nice piece. Tells the story.

http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/01/23/microsoft-bear-argument.aspx

You see it in the company's financials where its online unit, incredibly, is operating at a loss; overheating Xbox 360 consoles find the company taking a huge warranty hit for a system losing market share to the Wii; and the upgrade wave of its flagship operating system has been more of a ripple than a tsunami.

In fact, even Microsoft will tell you that its fortunes peaked several months ago. After a blowout fiscal first quarter (that ends in September for Mr. Softy), the company's guidance implies a 12% to 14% top-line gain through the final nine months of the current fiscal year.

[wbenton]

Bottom Line Info...

Bottom Line: Just like with betting or horses or other gambling...

Unless you have money to throw away on stocks... DON'T Invest!!!

FWIW