Microsoft: Buy Belize and put the Feds in your rearview mirror

Columnist Robert Cringely, taking a break from recounting the wonderful tale of his DSL installation, looks at one possible outcome of the Appeals Court decision in the Microsoft antitrust case. This article is more interesting than most of the reporting in the last few weeks. The main focus is the “woeful state of the PC industry,” but he also looks at the possibility of MS moving outside the U.S. to escape jurisdiction:

“The best solution I think would be for Gates and Ballmer to simply buy a small country and declare Microsoft’s sovereignty. Belize would be nice. It’s a small tropical country in Latin America where the dominant language is English and the CIA 2000 Factbook says the Gross Domestic Product is $740 million. Microsoft could easily buy Belize ($2 billion is $400 per acre and would probably be enough) pay off the $380 million national debt, then throw up luxury condos for 20,000 programmers.”