Your lists really sparkle my sunshine or whatever.

When I want to buy laptop, my mom considering to buy laptop that IS made by Chinna (Made by chinna is not made in chinna). My mom was think it will be cheap to buy laptop that is made by Chinna. Like any other electronic that made by chinna, it sell cheap, and not durabel. BUT THE LAPTOP THAT MADE BY CHINNA IS THINKPAD!!! Lenovo has been by the IBM pc devision, and Lenovo is a Chinna company. So the laptop made by Chinna is the only durable and Expensive electronic think that made by Chinna =)).
[about number 9]

don't emc have a stake in vmware, that is surely more significant than cisco?

> But Apple needed the dough...

Apple hardly needed the dough; $150M is a drop in the bucket for a company that had $4B+ in the bank at that time. What they needed was a compelling way to convince their SOHO customers that Microsoft would continue developing Office:mac. That it was non-voting stock is more telling than anything else.

And lest we forget, Microsoft made a tidy profit when they sold their stake. Everyone wins.