bill - 2:43 am on Apr 17, 2008 (gmt 0)

MS has basically NEVER created anything new. ... I for one can't think of any comparable case.

Thomas Edison comes quite close in a lot of respects. Quite a few inventions accredited to him were not actually the result of his own actual efforts, but patents purchased from others and the work of people he hired or paid off. He took existing technologies or ideas, refined them, and marketed them. Sound familiar? ;)