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E-mail from Bill (1994)

newyorker.com

41–50 of 72 posts

Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)

#41
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-password sentiment I've seen sometimes is annoying. They serve their purpose just fine. The worst you get is that password leaks and such happen sometimes and people forget and have to reset them sometimes.

He said 'password requirements' not 'passwords.' I'm assuming he meant the nonsense wherein "you must have a number, lower and upppercase letter, symbol, and a demon-summoning pentagram in your password." https://xkcd.com/936/

[deleted]

Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)

#43
post #36
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~12 billion inflation-adjusted, but your point stands.

How do you work out 'inflation adjusted' numbers? I've always wondered.

Classic approach would be:

You have an inflation rate (measured through a time series of Consumer Price Indices) for a given timeframe and an initial amount of money. Multiply it.

It's just to compare purchasing power over time.

Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)

#44
post #29

>"BILL GATES, aged thirty-eight, is one of the richest men in the country—the richest in 1992, and the second richest, after the investor Warren Buffett, in 1993, with a fortune of six billion one hundred and sixty million dollars, according to Forbes. " Very strange that only just 20-25 years ago, the richest people in the world were "only" worth <7,000,000,000

It would be more interesting to look at their wealth as a percentage of the world's wealth. We have greater output per capita (GDP) today than back then so while the nominal wealth amount may be considered low it's quite possible it was a higher percentage of the world's wealth back then than it is today.

I'm pretty sure this is not the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...

Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)

#45
post #15

The amazing thing was that as late as 1994, Bill Gates had a public email address.

I'm not surprised; I'd be more surprised if it actually went to /dev/null at this point (as opposed to being screened and possibly forwarded for a response.) As late as 2011, Steve Jobs kept the same public email address: sjobs@apple.com. (There's a collection at http://stevemail.tumblr.com ) Some of the replies came within minutes of the originating message, so I wouldn't be surprised if he mostly dealt with the inc…

Bezos and Mark Cuban both famously have public email addresses. Cuban actually reads his own email, I suspect Bezos has an assistant screen the public email at this point (he claimed recently on stage at a conference that he reads all of his email, color me skeptical).

Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)

#46
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you work out 'inflation adjusted' numbers? I've always wondered.

The Fed provides estimates on the devaluation of the dollar over time. You'll find all sorts of other well known institutions and individuals that provide their own formulas however. The spectrum is pretty wide, from those that agree with the Fed's numbers, to people that think the Fed is intentionally significantly understating inflation.

Though it must be said that the latter are cranks who are impossible to take seriously if you look into their claims - basically an MBA who went off the rail with conspiracy theories...

Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)

#47
post #25
post #16

> "The pioneers of personal computers including Jobs, Kapor, Lampson, Roberts, Kaye, are all great people but I don’t think any of us will merit an entry in a history book." I don't think that will prove true for Mr. Gates or Mr. Jobs.

The list is interesting. Jobs or Gates, of course. Lampson, HNers will probably know from his important CS research such as on distributed systems - he'll be mentioned in those sort of history books, although not generalized ones. Kapor: I have to think for a while before I can finally pin him as 'Mitch Kapor, inventor of the spreadsheet'. Extremely important to business and economics and the modern world, almost as…

> but I don't think Luca Pacoli or double-entry books are mentioned in most history books so probably not

They did in mine - important factor for the wealth of the Medicis and the northern Italian city states around the 14th/15th century as well as the Hansa league later on. Though I went to school in a European country so YMMV.

Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)

#48
post #43
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you work out 'inflation adjusted' numbers? I've always wondered.

Classic approach would be: You have an inflation rate (measured through a time series of Consumer Price Indices) for a given timeframe and an initial amount of money. Multiply it. It's just to compare purchasing power over time.

Expanding with an example... Really you just want to use the index itself. It represents (in theory) the amount you'd pay for a basket of goods.

So say, for example, the Index was at 240 in 1992, but today that same index is 360. So for £100 of 1992 money in today's terms you'd do:

360/240 * 100 = £150

Essentially you just want the ratio of prices for the basket of goods.

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