[Novalug] Elevate America

[Bryan J. Smith]

It's one big, huge tax write-off system.  I know, I've followed this for years
with Microsoft.  It's one way they utterly avoid paying taxes, because they
get to write off "fair market value."  The charity is actually 1:100-1:1,000
of actual costs, and they "make tax credits" for themselves.

E.g., the $0.50/box that it takes the manufacture in China is a $500 write-off.
With training, the materials are a bit more, but if Microsoft is not providing
the instructors (which they are not in the "Academy" and other, "Continuing
Education" programs by states), it's still a nice write-off over an order of
magnitude or two of actual cost for the materials.

One of the most famous of these was in India.  India asked Microsoft,
instead, for the money.  That didn't work out to well for anyone.  But it was
very humorous for the Indian government to expose how little Microsoft was
actually donating.  ;)

It's these types of games that utterly disgust me as an American.  The
states largely foot the bill on these, and it costs Microsoft nothing.  They
get the loss of potential revenue as a tax write-off -- but because they
"sell" more and a virtually *0* cost to do so.  The resulting tax write-off is
like trading revenue for increase profit that is not reported -- like a "sale"
that is not revenue, but direct profit that they would not otherwise have.
It's quite a funny detail if you dive into the books.

Because it helps our economy none -- never has, never will.  But they get
awesome PR out of it.  Because people tune in for the dollars, not what
was actually donated and the costs involved with that.

Lastly, if you read what Microsoft is doing here, it's clear they are pushing
their Office training, which is not heavily utilized.  They are trying to get more
money out of their development, which was likely a reason for trying this
avenue.  I understand MCITP enrollments on Windows Server 2008 are very
low as well, hence the Academy.  Most everyone I talk to with MCSEs on
Windows 2000/2003 are not updating to MCITP on Windows Server 2008.

-- Bryan

P.S.  Personally my nine (9) exam MCSE (with Security specialty) cost me only
a couple hundred bucks and my new four (4) exam MCITP update only cost me
$100 flat, because I waited for Microsoft to give out special discount vouchers.
Basically they were "at cost" of actually sitting the exams at a Prometric
location (what Microsoft pays Prometric to administer it).




----- Original Message ----
From: "cmhowe at patriot.net" <cmhowe at patriot.net>

I don't know if what you mention is Linux, but if it is, such a group, if
it forms, might approach Jon LaBadie. Teaching is what his company does.
My impression of him leads me to believe he would be a very good teacher,
but maybe not in Windows topics.