Bill Gates, Hero

Steve Jobs = { it celebrity, celebrity, rich, geek god, arch rivalry 'Mac vs PC', ...}

Intersection = Bill Gates ∩ Steve Jobs = { it celebrity, celebrity, rich, geek god, arch rivalry 'Mac vs PC' }

Difference = { extreme public philanthropy }

So this difference goes hand in hand with arch rivalry 'Mac vs PC'. aka 'My penis is bigger than yours' to everyone but the subjects themselves.

Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake.

Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman.

Sure he was smart and he worked hard, but he was no smarter and worked no harder than many of the rest of us.

And what did he do with these fabulous once-in-a-lifetime gifts? He fucked anyone who got in his way, always to the benefit of Microsoft, and usually to the detriment of the industry.

When others wrote better code, he called his lawyers. When other developers wanted to collaborate, he stole their intellectual property. When customers or vendors balked, he crushed them. And when the citizens saw how unfair it all was and took action, he called his lobbyists.

So now maybe he wants to be like Andrew Carnegie in his next act, conveniently forgetting all the lives destroyed in the hope of "giving it all back". If so, good.

I really try to keep upbeat and optimistic in my posts here at hn, but I also understand how much we have forgotten, and sometimes I just can't resist. Every time I read about Bill Gates worship, I can vomit. Sometimes I really wonder how much better things would be for all of us hackers is he had just gone to law school and left our industry to develop as it could have.

Oooh, that feels better. Now back to work.

Bill Gates is often seen as a villain because of the late 1990s behavior of Microsoft and the quality of some of their flagship products (Windows and IE). It can be hard to separate perceptions of Bill Gates the man/philanthropist from Bill Gates the businessman. Perceptions of Bill Gates are colored by BSoD's, IE's non-compliance to standards, Frontpage creating pages that only rendered in IE, and awkward conventions and interfaces in several popular pieces of software.

(I personally think very highly of Bill and Melinda Gates for their charitable work.)